r i Wif^ii i iSti''ti^itii' i i''K i PiriiviiWi i ^^^^^ 



/>-&*. 



■H 



TTLE OF 
ETTYSBURG 

AND OTHER POEMS 



Ml". I,J ' "!P," 



t^MUMi 



K- THOMAS A . T. 




Class X-^^-^u-i^ 
Boole O^ 






Gopyiight]*! 



'M^i^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Ctie 



attlie 0^ ^i^itiQ^bnt^ 



wni< (Sbilifj^x pojemjsi 



BY 



®ty0m»js ^> ®* ?^»nnw 



<E 




BROADWAY PUBLISHING COMPANY 
835 BROADWAY, NEW YORK 






Copyright, 1912, 

BY 

THOMAS A. T. HANNA 



CCU314437 



CONTENTS 

THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG 

Page 
'The Book of the Wars of the Lord" ... 1 

The Battle Dawn 3 

Appeal to the Bards of Old ...... 5 

"The Irrepressible Conflict" 8 

Prolog of Freedom's Martyrs . . .■ . . .10 

"Forward, March!" 13 

The Eve of Battle ......... 15 

Pickett's Final Charge 18 

Not There 24 

General Meade . .24 

Burial ... 26 

To Gettysburg 30 

Their Monument 32 

The Paean 34 

The Song of Africa ,. . . 36 

Divine Praise from Human Wrath . . . .40 

NATIONAL THEMES 

A Revolution Backward 45 

A Centennial Ode 49 

Ad Magnam Britanniam 52 

Which England Art Thou Now? 54 

UNFULFILLED RENOWN 

An Unfulfilled Renown 59 

ANNALS OF THE POOR 

Parody on a Popular Ballad 75 

The Loss of a Fortune . ^^ 

The Wee Thing Sma' 79 

At Richard Cameron's Grave 82 

Rachel's Death Near Bethlehem . . >i . . 84 

"Thou Hast Gained Thy Brother" .... 86 

Alone in Ocean 89 

Stabat Mater 91 

NATURAL MUSIC 

The Coming of Evening .95 

"Sunt Quos Juvat" 97 

A Dichordon ., . . . 99 

A Monochord .; ,. ., ;.. i.: . 100 

On Long Island Sound . .^ w w w w ♦ 101 



CONTENTS 



Craig Varra 102 

The Spy's Passage Over the Alps . . . . .103 

■Summer Days , . . 106 

Bold Robin 107 

Thrice Fair 108 



PICTURES FROM GREEK URNS 

Medea 
5phigenia 



113 
115 
118 
119 
121 
122 
123 



Her Death Song 

Andromache . 

Eos 

A Fragment from ^Eschylus 

Persephone .... 

Shield-Bearing— Shield-Borne . . . . . 125 

The Flash of the Fall of Troy ...... 126 

First Chorus of the Agamemnon of ^schylus . . 127 

HORTUS MORTIS 

In the Garden, a Tomb . . . . . . .137 

F-or Ever ........... 143 

The Lost Star .... 144 

The Two Memnons ....,..>. 146 

The Chambered Pyramid ........ 147 

Time the Iconoclast . ., . i. ... . 149 

Vale-Vale-Vale 151 

MINOR CHORDS 

The World-Pain . . . . .. -. . . -. 155 

The Valley m . . > . 157 

Succession .- . . . .. » . . >: . 158 

Repression . . . . » ■. . ^ ■• > 160 

Memory Faithful to Sorrow >• ;. 161 

To the Memory of Edgar Allan Poe . >: (.; ;. 164 

DEATH AND FAITH 

To a New Singer in Heaven's Choir „ ., w > 167 
The Flight of the Golden Wings .. > m ,. -. 169 
The Oldest Mystery . . .- . . -.: > . 170 
In Dromore Churchyard . .■ v . w i. . 172 
After Many Days ......... 174 

To K. M. M. . . . . t.. . :. > . . 176 

SATIRE 

Wanted— A Pastor . . . r. .- :. > . 181 



THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG 



The Battle of Gettysburg 
and Other Poems 



"THE BOOK OF THE WARS OF 
THE LORD." 

Of that great fight of brothers and of men, 
The champions of the right or of the wrong, 

Fought on the sylvan hills of peaceful Penn, 
Thou God of providence, assist the song. 

Such fight as never on earth again may be. 

Till mountains crush into the winevat sea. 

The day has come, the nation's earthquake day; 

Its day of drums and trumpets and alarms, 
When Right, through Anguish, cleaves her crimson 
way, 
Nor law is heard, but that which pleads with 
arms; 
Where man's last argument with man is heard. 
And cannons speak the arbitrating word. 
I 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Where are the bells, this great day to acclaim? 
Doubt not but ye shall hear them when they 

sound ; 
Their tongue is thunderbolt, and forked with 

flame, 
And when they speak, who shall be heedless 

found ? 
O man, this is the triple sounding bell 
That's heard in heaven — heard, too, in earth and 

hell 



How many, O inexorable sun, 

Dost thou awake to meet the doomful day? 
Eternity shall end the day, begun 

In time; then let them dream while yet they 
may; 
Canst thou not let them sleep a little o'er, 
Who, when they sleep again, shall wake no more? 



To-day, to-morrow, thou mayst wake them, sun; 

But the day following, ah, who shall hear? 
They lie like Memnon in the desert lone, 

Responding not unto thy summons clear. 
Thou spreadst the morning on the mountains — ^but 
Their inward eyes to all that glow are shut. 



The Orphean voice, the Orphean lyre, were thine. 
In those old fables that we loved so well ; 

Thine was the monochord of mountain-pine. 
And Triton-music from his ocean-shell ; 

Thine was the twanging of the Memnon string, 

Welcome from earth-born unto heaven-born King. 

2 



and Other Poems 



Tarry, O punctual sun, behold thy face 
Within the wrinkled mirror of the sea; 

Urge not thine indefatigable race; 

Sure, the rent nation calleth not for thee. 

Too brief, too brief, hath been the summer's night, 

Too soon, too soon, must dawn the battle-light. 

But from of old hath been ordained this day — 
From the great deeps two ocean-tides must come ; 

The dark -blue wave must meet the solemn grey. 
And all the line must burst in bloody foam — 

Sun, stand not still, but roll thy burnish'd wheel 

Along the firmament of furbish'd steel. 



THE BATTLE DAWN. 

The rosy dawn from o'er the wakeful sea, 

Breathes on the waking land her fragrant breath, 

And stirs a whisper in each silent tree; 

Her garments shine on destin'd hills of death ; 

Her silver coronet of morning star 

Sheds a faint glory on the fields of war. 

Rise o'er the Appalachian ranges, drawn 
From God's unfathomable sea of light, 

Rise, springing fount of the mid-summer dawn ; 
Reveal thy sky of azure, barr'd with v/hite. 

Sweet, grand emblazonry of God alone, 

A shield that vails his too-resplendent throne. 

Rise o'er the hills, thou day-spring from on high, 
And from the cold Laurentian heights far north, 

To where the long, rude mountain bastions die. 
And Alabama's generous stream goes forth, 

A river from the dying mountain born, — 

There spread thy glory, thou ^Eonian morn! 
3 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



This mountain barrier, on its seaward flank, 
Is first to meet the couriers of the day — 

The sun, just now, on Sinim's myriads sank. 
Leaving the stars to rule that strange Cathay, 

Now, centered on the ribb'd Atlantic floor. 

Extends dim radiance to our dawning shore. 

New Hampshire's mountains, scarcely freed from 
snow, 

And, purple-dawning, green hills of Vermont, 
Then the cold Adirondacks take the glow ; 

And Hudson sees the Catskills' bastion-front 
Change into mighty mounds of greenery; 
Sees, but halts not his march unto the sea. 

Now Shawangunk receives the stream of light, 
Pour'd from the Ogygian fountains of the dawn, 

And broad Pocono, from the mists of night, 
Uplifts his shoulders like a giant's brawn; 

And soon, Wyoming's vale, grow greener thou 

Than Arcady or land of golden bough! 

The morning watcher on thy height, Penn-Mar, 
Sees that first miracle — **Let there be light!" 

Sweep from the tide to AUeghanies' bar; 
To him the Virgin-land and Penn's unite ; 

And Akel-dama, forty miles away, 

Not red as yet, but only dim and gray. 

From northeast to southwest, in Titan curve, 
Illumes the sun the Appalachian line, 

Across the state its giant arc doth swerve, 
A deep-indented but unbroken spine. 

A great tenth- wave of earth, arrested, still— 

And back'd by many a long and waving hill. 

4 



and Other Poems 



And southward, westward still th' Eoan skies 
With mingling of rose cloud and violet filled, 

To where Virginia's Peaks of Otter rise, 
Two noble pillars for the sun to gild — 

The Smoky Mountains vail in gloom their crest, 

To nurse the Tennessee from cloudy breast. 



APPEAL TO THE BARDS OF OLD. 

But who this epos red and loud shall tell? 

Sing, thou blind harper of the muses' dawn ! 
The wage of battle thou hast chanted well. 

When cities or when beauties lay in pawn. 
Great captains here shall play a greater game 
Than what thou didst reward with amarant fame. 

Or ^schylus, thou man of Marathon ; 

Thy seven chiefs at Thebes are un forgot. 
Yet clash thy triremes, yet thy Persians groan; 

Loud time thy clanging shields can silence not; 
Thou art a battle singer, sing me this. 
Sublime as Marathon or Salamis. 

Resounding Mantuan, thy hexameters 

Go marching on, and fall not back from time; 

Of all the wars that peal in mortal verse. 
Arms and the man have found no nobler rhyme. 

Frame then for Gettysburg thy famous chords. 

And roll again thine ocean-sounding "words. 

5 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Or thou, the lyrist of Olympian games, 

Whose fiery odes have crowned, for lasting days, 

With laurel and with song the haughty names 
That cared for nothing but Hellenic praise: 

Oh, here's a game shall greater guerdon bring 

Than thine, though sought by many a distant King. 

O Pindar ! were there but one singer now 

Would sing this song commensurately grand. 

As far superior to thine, as thou 

Art nobler than thine athletes on the sand — 

Then — then had been a fit antiphonal 

To Homer and the ancient chorus all. 

In Athens, at the acme of her glory. 
Echoes of Marathon still in her ears, 

Herodotus read out the mighty story. 
And young Thukydides was found in tears — 

Prophetic sorrow, and beseemed him well. 

Who Athens' tale of ruin lived to tell. 

We read : In joy for that sea-fight ^Egean, 
O Sophokles, that thou didst dance and sing ; 

But why no ode from thee, no clanging paean. 
In hearts of men through all the years to ring? 

To praise Themistokles, and Athens' fleet. 

Thy pen were surely nobler than thy feet. 

Dante, grim searcher of abysmal gloom, 

Life moribund that sought the lively dead, 

Descending the concentric pits of doom, — 
Sing for us this great history instead; 

Let this high task thy solemn spirit move. 

Dread as thy dreams, and real as thy love. 
6 



and Other Poems 



Ah, great of old ! ye will not sing this war ; 

Yours was the thunder-chant that rolls away ; 
Sounds of the sea, from which we travel far, 

Or morning music, silent in the day. 
Ye are but echoes, through Time's mountains 

borne, 
In music dying like the Alpine horn. 

Take, then, the mighty harp, ye feeble hands, 
And, trembling, strike the long untroubled 
strings. 

The battle-sounds from those dim times and lands 
Ye cannot wake — nor notes that ravished Kings ; 

Arion's harp ye may not think to play. 

Which tranced the dolphins on the ocean-way. 

Lost is the might that bent Odysseus' bow, 

Dumb is Amphion's lyre; dull. Hector's lance. 

The voiceless trump of Roland who shall blow? 
That pealed from Roncesvalles down to France? 

Never, on any sea, the Sirens' strain 

Shall thrill the spray-wet mariners again. 

Nor Argive fleet shall wait the parting gasp- 
Of Agamemnon's daughter on the shore; 

Nor sweet Alcestis linger in the clasp 
Of that lone husband, ever, ever, more; 

Nor stern Electra, o'er her brother's urn, 

Wail as for him that never could return. 

E'en nightingales sing not so sweetly now* 

As when they sang Kolonos' boughs among; 
Where Oidipous uplifted sightless brow, 

And leaned upon those daughters sweet and 
strong — 
And can we find no Attic nightingale. 
To sing in summer woods this grander tale? 
7 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



"THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT." 

As one who dreads he hath a hidden cancer 
Would hide it, if he could, from his own soul, 

And dares not press the question to an answer, 
And fears to learn if he be sick or whole; 

So have ye tried the black wound to conceal, 

Till God hath probed it with unpitying«steel. 

Down in the Ocean's sunless, stormless hold, 
The horrid secret chamber of the world, 

Where sleeps Leviathan or Kraken old. 

Around the roots of unseen mountains curled: 

Let him sleep on ! Who is so fierce, to dare 

Arouse the silent monster from his lair? 

So, men would keep the woful question hush'd. 
And chide if any dared to breathe it much; 

While weeping, singing, praying, toiling, crush'd 
Slaves waited God's own liberating touch; 

Prayed — while the God of providence conceals 

Himself amid the burning wheels in wheels. 

Arouse thee, giant-question, Samson-truth ! 

The world shall learn thou hast angelic might ; 
He that hath armed thee, knows nor change, nor 
ruth; 

Thy lowly weapons win the heavenly fight ; 
Tear thou the gates of Gaza from their hold. 
And thus the everlasting doors unfold ! 

Thou breathest joyful in the powder-stench. 
Thou seest the way, straight through the battle- 
cloud ; 
Thy voice is like Pelides' at the trench ; 

The thunder of the captains, if more loud 
Than heaven's own, is harmony divine 
To thee, more sweet than all the rhythmic Nine. 
8 



and Other Poems 



Ye hushed that question on Delilah's knees, 
Ye made it sleep on lap of Compromise ; 

Ye frayed the gnats that would have stung its ease, 
And drugged it with your diplomatic lies. 

But hark ! God's voice ! the Samson-question wakes. 

And at its earthquake-stamp the people shakes. 

The sword of doom hath hung above your feast. 
And once again is filled the heavenly word, 

That not the warrior only, but the priest, 

Must sell his garment and must buy his sword. 

Too long with God the dark account hath stood, 

A score which he will now expunge with blood. 

The great sweet waters that no dam can stanch. 
In the broad continental bosom born, 

Plunge white and swift and strong (as avalanche 
From Monte Rosa or from Matterhorn) 

The cloud, the foam, the rainbow and the fall, 

iWith everlasting thunder over all. 

The foaming rapids, on their awful slide. 

The bellow of the green-white mass that falls, 

The deadly swirling pools below, that glide 
Between the riven geologic walls; 

The anguish'd waters, wild for want of home, 

Eternal thunder — everlasting foam! 

So this is no slow landslide, which at first 
With stanching timbers might have been made 
good; 

But Krakatoa or Pelee, that burst 
And hurled a massy mountain in the flood. 

The treach'rous earth, like Judas, rived in twain. 

An Akeldama on the reddening main. 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



PROLOG OF FREEDOM'S MARTYRS. 

Whose tomb has lasted through all empires' 
change ? 

That savage victor's, whose immortal hate 
Wreaked on his victim vengeance foul and strange. 

Oblivion cannot blot his name ; nor fate 
Abridge his fame — conspicuous far around 
The ancient glory of Achilles' mound. 

The conquerors are they that fill the aisle 

Of Time's gray minster, and their chariot-march 

Reverberates along the storied pile; 

The faded banners, hung from every arch 

"Stir at their trumpet-blazon — and the crowd, 

'To, triumphe!" is their rolling anthem proud. 

The joy of conflict ! Of what art thou made, 
O man, to find thy most entrancing joy 

In practicing this most infernal trade? 

Hast thou not changed since Hector died for 
Troy? 

Is yet the gladdest song of humans, that 

They raise when trampling in the human vat? 

And is it true, earth has no grander scene 

To spread beneath the sunlight, or God's eye; 

A hundred thousand homicides convene. 
With more of glory by the more that die: 

Earth's highest fame is writ in lines of red. 

And living glory built on heaps of dead. 

If man must fight, if man by steel must die. 

If man must hurl God's bolts at fellowman. 
Grant him at least, an object meet and high; 

10 



and Other Poems 



Let him discern he serves the ancient Plan 
Of Him, who marches his unhinder'd way 
Through blood and tears, life, death, and night and 
day. 

The valiant dead of every age and land. 
Soldiers of Liberty, behind her shield, 

Who sprang to grapple death at her command, 
And made their glory haunt the stricken field — 

Can that great shield be broken in the strife? 

And liberty with them give up her life? 

I mind me of a grim sarcophagus, 

In which defeated warrior found his home, 

Whereon the sculptor had engraven thus 
His faith that triumph from defeat should come ; 

A bronze arm, starting from those cerements hid, 

Groped for the sword upon the stony lid. 

As in that fierce mellay of Hun and Goth, 
Fought in the Catalaunian vale, when they 

Who died in battle, rose at midnight, wroth; 
Gripped spirit arms and armor, for the fray ; 

A vast and shadowy, an infernal band, 

Whose battle-rage death could not countermand. 

So ye, dead champions of freedom, rise, 
Be ye immortal till the work is done ; 

Where'er the down-trod dare the grand emprise, 
There let the ancient combat thunder on; 

For, those who march with freedom's guiding star 

May lose a battle, but not lose the war. 

O Justice, hast thou, as men think, weak hands ? 

Yet Pride and Hate, twin dragons, shall not slip ; 
Their necks shall know thy fingers as steel bands, 
II 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



And writhe in thine inexorable grip ; 
For wrestHng Justice, in the heavenly Plan, 
Hath God for Umpire — yea, for partisan! 

Come to the land of heroes ; let us dream 
We've found some clear Walhalla of the brave, 

Where Maccabseus stands in glory's gleam, 
Or stern Leonidas, who died to save; 

Here's blond Arminius, who, stroke on stroke. 

Hewed Varus' legions like the woodman's oak. 

Rienzi, of the empire fallen — advance! 

Llewellyn from the old Silurian height. 
And that bright girl that crowned the King of 
France, 

With Albin's champion, the Wallace-wight; 
Or fierce Bozzaris, and his Klephts are seen. 
And Andrew Hofer of the Engadine. 

Ye are the noble army I who have fought 
That none might dominate your fatherland; 

And though ye failed in that for which ye wrought, 
Yet doth your work to-day immortal stand. 

Now, to your circle of the palm and crown, 

I introduce our mutual friend, John Brown! 

John Brown of Torrington, born pioneer; 

John Brown o' th' Adirondacks, visionary; 
John Brown of Ossawattomie, the seer ; 

John Brown, first fruits of death at Harper's 
Ferry ; 
One of those Great-heart Johns, as stiff as steel. 
Who ne'er would turn his toe where was his heel. 

Well him, 'tween battles, on the bridge of night. 

They sang; uprose the giant shadows then; 
His sons, protagonists in Freedom's fight, 

12 



and Other 'Poems 



Forerunners they, of Lincoln and his men. 
And while the waving smoke and sparkles soared, 
"His soul is marching on" — a thousand roared. 

Old history has many a glorious John. 

John Baptist, brave, the leader of the throng; 
Then he that leaned the holiest breast upon ; 

And John, whose surname was the Golden- 
tongue ; 
Huss, Bradford, Wyclif, Knox, upheld the name, 
Gave God the glory, and endured the shame. 



"FORWARD, MARCH!'' 

O little heart of man, sublimely bold. 
Who marchest to the battle-gulf of fire, 

Earth-born and moribund, the ancient Cold 
How soon resumes the spark of thy desire ? 

As fiery rivers, from Vesuvius' cone. 

Soon, by the waiting sea, are chilled to stone. 

But when high human right anear the brink 

Is toppling, and strong hands are raised to urge 

It headlong — then, ye men of Israel, shrink, 
Retreat, recoil not from the bloody verge. 

May not a million meet the mortal spasm, 

To make God's highway o'er the bloody chasm? 

The steeds of Providence are red and lowering. 
With clouds and darkness round about his car; 

But m the zenith love divine is towering. 
Fair as the morning or the evening star: 

Not hours, but ages, in their destined grooves, 

Roll onward, to attend him as he moves. 

13 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Its anthem be the continental storm, 

That bends a thousand forests as it blows; 

That twangs crescendo on each mountain-form. 
And tingles on the Rocky Mountain snows; 

That prophesies a glory out of pain. 

And sings : 'To, triumphe," for the slain. 

March on — your crowning glory ye shall wrest in a^ 
Close grapple from the iron hands of death; 

Move in the marble line hewn out of destiny. 
And to the God of battles trust your breath: 

lYe march like Israel, through a crimson sea. 

From land of bondmen into land of free. 

March on, earth-shaking, but forget not him 
Who died; to liberate the souls of men 

Died; but beyond all spheres and ether dim 
Is throned, as God, but merciful as then — 

Lift up your eyes above that shining arch. 

Soldiers! remember Him, and Forward, March! 

March on with drums — to death; as when the 
crimes 

Of Spanish Fury swept the streets below, 
Far up the Antwerp-spire, were heard the chimes 

Soft as the tinkling woodland-waters' flow; 
Four times an hour the dulcet carillon 
Warbles, while death and horror thunder on. 

March on ; for that dear heaven o'er-arching 

Knows from of old what trumpet-music means; 

When angel-armies, fiery-arm'd, were marching, 
Embattled in eternal peaceful scenes; 

Saint Michael and all angels in array; 

May ye not serve the Infinite, as they? 
14 



and Other Poems 



THE EVE OF BATTLE. 

"We greet thee, Csesar, on our way to death/' 
So said the gladiator-band at Rome; 

But on the eve of battle, soldier's breath 
Goes forth in sighing for the loved at home: 

father, mother, little sister, now. 

If ever ye would pray, make haste to bow. 

And on the bivouac : "Be still, boys, hark, 
Do ye not hear the sound of mooing kine? 

It is the 't ween-light of the day and dark. 

The hour, in that York-midland home of mine. 

The cows come pouring sweet breath up the lane ; 

1 wonder if I'll drink their milk again?" 

And over the fast-glooming fields there comes. 
Made musical by distance, cry of hound ; 

And they lie wakeful (who can sleep in drums 
And bugles) just to hear the homely sound. 

For never seems our home so far away 

As on the even of the battle-day. 

"It was the hour when fond desires move 
The mariners, and tender grows the heart; 

For they have said, Farewell, to whom they love: 
For then must Love's new-exiled pilgrim start 

And thrill — at sound of bell from some far bourne, 

When seems the dying day its death to mourn." 

So sang the iron-featured Florentine, 

Whom Florence loved, and hated, and exiled; 

Oh, how he loved the dawn, on waters seen. 
And the soft footsteps of the evening mild. 

Majestic soul; at home among the stars; 

But we must leave him, and come down to wars. 

15 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



'Tis golden middle of the summer now, 

When earth is pregnant with the fruits to be. 

Green leaves, prophetic of the golden bough, 
And fields, as creamy as the moonlit sea — 

One silent harvester awaits the morn. 

When he shall reap, — and men will be his corn. 

Now, as the western glory fails and dims. 

Some hearts would breathe, "Lord, teach us how 
to pray," 

^olian memory whispers the dear hymns 

Left on the heart-strings from an earlier day. 

List, as the evening grows more dark and still. 

The trine staccato of the whippoorwill. 

Thou dost not weep, thou red-cheek'd subaltern; 

No, but dost grind thy teeth to stay the tears ; 
In mind thou seest thy father, strong and stern; 

Thy mother's face, love-aureoled, appears. 
Sore was that mother's sob, that father's sigh. 
When thou didst rush from them with light '*Good- 
bye." 

And who is he, immersed in wakeful dream, 
His face irradiate with the sun's last rim? 

Ask who is she, beside Chenango's stream, 
Whose soul is busy still with thoughts of him, 

With trembling eyelids there, and trembling mouth, 

She walks alone, to turn her vision south. 

And, as two bees may meet on one red flower, 
His memory and hers are draining bliss 

From soft rehearsals of that parting hour, 
When lips quarternion framed a single kiss. 

From that one kiss how many more were born. 

Till the broad bosom from the soft was torn? 
i6 



and Other Poems 



Sweetest and costliest of the fruits of earth, 
But oft, ah, growing on forbidden tree : 

Too rich for memory, too sweet for mirth. 
The touch of Hps which, glad, together flee. 

More generous far than apple or than rose. 

Where one such kiss is plucked, another grows. 

Too soon to be forever parted, breath 
Now mingles in the dear salute of love; 

Sweet foretaste of the bitterness of death. 
When melting hearts and lips together move. 

Kisses that sank deep in the memory. 

Like pearls beneath a dim-green eastern sea. 

Like birds that sang before the tempest fell. 

While half the forest gloomed beneath the cloud, 

But disappeared, ah, who can whither tell, 

When the tornado through the forest plowed? 

But these, or other birds, at other whiles, 

Shall chant again, in those green-vaulted aisles. 

Kisses of parting, deep, and still, and sweet, 
Must all that sweetness perish in a day? 

Are they so evanescent, they so fleet. 

And must their thrilling impress pass away ; 

Those seals of memory, pressed upon the heart, 

Through joined lips, that were so loath to part? 

Till Death, till Death shall part them; hateful 
Death, 

(Who hath a spite at lovers) from his throne. 
Breathes on their lips with his Septentrion breath. 

And turns those eager lips to silent stone: 
And one twin-heart turns rigid at his chill ; 
And one is broken, but is beating still. 

17 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



In fault or fold of strata is no pain, 

Although an hundred layers be upborne, 

And the deep canon seams the western plain ; 
But when a heart from heart is reft and torn, 

The cleft is deeper and the wound is more, 

For man's heart still is deeper than earth's core. 



PICKETT'S FINAL CHARGE. 

Yes, far in heaven, ye trailing summer clouds, 
(White ships that drift upon an azure sea). 

Clouds loftier and more fair than this which 
shrouds 
With smoke and noxious mist the summer lea — 

Sweet, beautiful and voiceless heavens, ah, why 

May not the earth be peaceful as the sky? 

For now there is Sabbatic peace in heaven, 
Whence warring angels are forever fled; 

[But here on earth no day, of all the seven. 
But is profaned by quick, defiled by dead. 

And if, on previous days, the war might languish, 

This day shall be one fierce unbroken anguish. 

Like the slow clanging of a midnight bell. 
Some syllables of thunder from the guns 

Athwart the dreadful midday silence fell — 

Till swift white flame o'er all the batteries runs: 

Then shook the mountain-side, below, above, 

Like vast Olympus at the bolts of Jove. 
i8 



and Other Poems 



Now all the dogs of war are slipt at last ; 

They see, or think they see, their prey at large. 
Nay, leave these tropes. What is this movement 
vast? 

This is fierce Pickett, his tremendous charge — 
Th' accelerated booms, that stun the vault. 
Are signal bells, to launch the grand assault. 

See now, the hills loom dreadful in the smoke, 
While batteries belch their mutual horrors forth ; 

Each crash, like splitting of a pine or oak. 

Each bolt. Death's angel to the South or North. 

Swift, as from cloud to cloud, they went and came ; 

Titanic thunders and Typhoan flame. 

The long, grey wave is flowing o'er the valley — 
Valley of death-shade to that sun-bright host — 

With shriek of wounded and with shout of rally, 
With dead that drop ere half the vale be crost. 

Where is th' eclipse that will o'er-vail the scene. 

And roll, these shuddering, sulphurous hills be- 
tween ? 

A live Niagara of wrath and force. 

But rolling upward, glistening-grey, compact; 
Rocks, trees, or fences, swayed or stayed its course 

A-twinkling, then swept on the cataract; 
While bomb and bullet, as God's thunderstorm, 
Smote the grey line which they could not deform. 

Or shall we say 'twas as a tidal wave 
Heaved up from the pelagic, oozy floor, 

Which distant and subaqueous earthquake drave 
On Fujiyama's or on Andes' shore? 

Where far up inland vales, the ocean hurled 

The squander'd treasures of a deep-sea world. 

19 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Or, as long-scatter'd range of briny rock, 
The guardian outpost of the moaning shore, 

That meets the yet unbroken ocean's shock, 
And hides itself amid the foam and roar ; 

Then Hfts its hog-backs from the passing flood. 

And, dripping, stands where it has always stood. 

Or northward, where the yearly giant tides 

March in broad squadrons up the Fundy bay; 

[White steeds of foam, whereon the storm-king 
rides. 
Ramp in the forefront of the sea's array; 

Till the assault of all the swaying host 

Shall burst at once on either rocky coast. 

And o'er each sloping bench march inland far. 
Where farmsteads hear the voice of the new sea; 

A thousand ships lift, each its tilted spar. 
And toss, and grind the anchors to be free ; 

And still the following sea, in white-capp'd rank, 

Flings higher foam, opposed, on either flank. 

Until that dryad stream, the lone Saint John, 
Pours all his breadth of foam adown the steep, 

And in tormented channel thunders on, 
To meet the invasion of the charging deep: 

When the sea smites the river, the impact 

Hushes the bellowing of the cataract. 

So moves the living, raging, bleeding wave, 

Swollen so full of life, so near to death; 

The breaker-line of twenty thousand brave, 

Whose hold on life is but one struggling 
breath. 
On — up, where loom the batteries, stern and steep, 
On — up— against the star-flag — oh they sweep. 
20 



and Other Poems 



Swift moved the line o'er the Phlegraean field, 
But oh, more swift the bullet and the bomb; 

At every step, some stricken hero reeled, 

Groaned in the rank, and, staggering, fell there- 
from: 

But on — still on — the host, in tenser swarms. 

Can spare no glance at all those level'd forms. 

As summer wanderer in the matted brake, 
With eyes unwonted to the woodland gloom, 

Who hears, not heeds, faint clatter of the snake; 
Can that small crackling noise portend his doom? 

How could he know, that wanderer in the glade, 

That Death, like baby, with such rattle played? 

So seemed the rattle of the musketry, 
Pattering along the terrible firing line; 

Clattering, like hail on glazed greenery ; 

Tremendous Death should come with greater 
sign : 

See men ripe, unripe, with as little sound 

As nuts or acorns, dropping to the ground. 

Upon the eve of Scottish battle : "Spare, 

O Lord, the green and take the ripe" — well- 
pray'd 

Was this, the warrior-covenanter's prayer ; 
Here saved and lost together fall ; the blade 

Of war's scythe-bearing chariot hath spread 

The fields with swath of indiscriminate dead. 

Each old-world tribe that builds America 

Here makes libation — pours its stint of blood; 

Amid the war-smoke and the hoarse hurrah, 
Beside Van Rensselaer, O'Tooley stood; 

21 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Smith, Swenstrom, Schmidt, DeCourcy, Jones, Mc- 

Clurg, 
Their blood together ran at Gettysburg. 

Mark, near the hilltop, that grey, rude, stone fence ; 

Of ten republics, there, the gathered strength 
Climbed to its acme, wavered, and rolled thence ; 

Rolled backward, all along its bloody length. 
A flood that bore disaster on its swell, 
And ruin, — oh, what ruin — when it fell. 

At the flood-tide of this tremendous charge. 
Its highest undulation marks its doom; 

The living sea meets its predestined marge: 
**Lo, hither, and no further shalt thou come." 

Back from the rampart of the low stone wall 

The climbing, foaming, raving waters fall. 

Hast thou beheld, on hillsides fair and far ; 

Far inland from the noise of any sea. 
The channel'd hollows and the lines that scar 

The stony outcrop of the daisied lea? 
Thou sayest: ''Here, in aeons hard to tell, 
Some now lost sea or ocean rose and fell." 

Or, as some river, heir to mountain-flood, 

Whose record on a column stands engraved — 

Thou seest it meandering o'er its mud ; 

But round that column once it raced and raved. 

Thou sayest: 'The water climbed its highest there, 

What time it swept the drowned lowlands bare." 

Come, Death, advance thy livid, cloudy form. 
And Slaughter, wave thy brand incarnadine ; 
On, Battle, roll thy chariot like a storm, 

22 



and Other Poems 



Abreast this surging, gray, and seething line. 
Surely, a cataract of foam shall boil, 
When from the crest it turns in vast recoil. 

Death hisses, now, in unseen bullets' hum. 

Death thunders from the cannon's brimstone 
mouth ; 

Death bursts from out the detonating bomb, 

Death fills the tortured air from north to south ; 

Death shouts amain in every powder-peal, 

And Death waits dumb on points of silent steel. 

But o'er that green arena, stained with red, 
What eye can view the high consistory, 

The cloud of witnesses, the quick and dead, 
Unseen who see this day of history? 

No brazen arms, nor panting trumpet's blare. 

But trans-ethereal armies marshall'd there. 

And Lee, — great marshal : now must be relinquished 

Thy shining hope of final victory; 
The star that led thy march is now extinguished, 

Plunged in Oblivion's abysmal sea, 
Like Hannibal turn'd back from gates of Rome, 
Turn thou again unto thy sunward home. 

Two years, beyond that bloody triduiim, 
That southern Paladin hath kept the field ; 

But ne'er again on northern hills his drum 
Hath rumbled, nor his haughty clarion pealed. 

Two years, like lion, ever front to foe, 

He made his <icx>m (inexorable) slow. 



i23 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



NOT THERE. 

And Jackson — Stonewall Jackson — iron man : 

Thy life reached not to this tremendous hour; 

To right or left, in rearguard or in van, 

Thy presence had been as a bastion'd tower : 

Thou wouldst have smitten with the hand of Mars, 

While Freedom perished in fraternal wars. 

Not so was it ordained ; the high command 
Of Him who all predestines, gave to thee 

The lion's heart, the eagle's eye, the hand 
Gigantic; by his old profound decree; 

But, in the same decree, 'twas fixed in heaven, 

That Gettysburg to thee should ne'er be given. 

So, May has passed, and rosy June has fled. 
But thou shalt wake to no reveille horn ; 

Two months ago, that midnight bullet sped 

Which made the armies of the Southland mourn. 

"Let us cross o'er the river," (last words these), 

"And rest ourselves beneath the shady trees." 



GENERAL MEADE. 

Beside the woodland Schuylkill's pictured wave, 

Begirt by myriads of urban dead. 
There, traveler, thou canst find the emerald grave 

Of him who that defensive army led; 
While History's page shall blaze, and Memory 

bleed. 
Great people : ne'er forget the name of Meade. 

24 



and Other Poems 



That fame which many are so swift to ask, 
Was thrust on him; the crisis of his life 

Found him prepared ; girded for his great task. 
He cahnly, sadly, won the crucial strife ; 

Had one great task, and that was nobly done ; 

Had one sore fight, and that was sorely won. 

Burden of eye and brain, of will and hand; 

On him the Lord Omnipotent had hung 
Long destinies of a more glorious land 

Than Genghis conquered or than Tasso sung; 
Land that can sound the psean east and west, 
Atlantic burden and Pacific rest. 

Handful of dust, here lies the weary head 

That throbbed with all the planning of the fight ; 

High-priest of war, between the quick and dead. 
Who saw three days of darkness end in light. 

A man just equal, and what if no more — 

Equal to that tremendous load he bore, 

Gone to the land of peace; delightsome land. 
Where men learn war no more ; land of the blest, 

Where peaceful angels haunt the gleaming strand, 
And welcome earthborn pilgrims to their rest. 

This is the change inefifable — to pass 

From earth's Red Sea unto the sea of glass, 

This day, how much of history was made : 

'Twill cause the pens of scribes unborn to fly; 

This making history is a ghastly trade. 

Ten thousand lightless faces watch the sky; 

Ten thousand stars look down upon the slain, 

Ten thousand angels mourn the crimes of men. 

25 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



His victory was greater than we knew: 
He was predestined not to faint nor fail; 

For when the balance shook, Jehovah threw 
His sword invisible into the scale. 

Let not the victors shout, the vanquished weep, 

His judgments are of old a mighty deep. 



BURIAL. 



The lonely aftermath of battle comes ; 

For now, the gleaners of Death's harvest must 
With trailing arms, low flags, and muffled drums. 

Lay ashes unto ashes, dust to dust; 
And o'er the grave-heap fire the harmless shot; 
Farewell to those who were, and who are not. 

Farewell : The sound is like a miserere, 

Wail'd by a wind that comes, we know not 
whence ; 
But through the dark, harsh day hath swept the 
dreary 
Expanse of tarn or heath ; until the dense 
Cold fog is rolled up from the ocean-plain, 
And the hush'd wind begins to weep in rain. 

Here lift they one, his head with bullet torn — 

Ah, mother, didst thou bear him but for this? 
Those happy years, when, noon and night and 
morn, 
His lips, or babe or boy, were sweet to kiss : 
Then, thou couldst snatch him joyous from the 

floor, 
And now, he is a crimson load for four, 
26 



and Other Poems 



And here is one whose supple limbs are gashed 
And shattered ; for too well the bomb-shard sped ; 

Dreadful, to see this God-built temple dashed 
To ruin; softly now arrange that head; 

Lay straight those faithful hands by the rent side; 

This is the form that was a father's pride. 

And there is one who in the battle-hour 

Sat down, and leaned upon an upright stone, 
And as an ^qual met the sombre power, 

- While round him lay the dead, supine or prone ; 
And in his hand is somewhat — come and see: 
Here is a Silence that will speak to thee. 

The cold hand holds before the sightless eyes 
A pictured likeness of his children three; 

So, gazing on those tender forms, he dies ; 
Last image on the glazing eyeballs — See : 

Dear faces that made glad his cottage hearth 

Beamed on him there, until the last of earth. 

There sits he dead — three hundred miles away, 
Where Alleghany rolls a slender flood, 

Among the timbered hills, ah, there are they, 
The wailing m.other and her wailing brood. 

But here, at Gettysburg, the lethal pain 

Was soothed by that last image on his brain. 

That dark-rob'd searcher? From the neighbor- 
farm 

She seeks her own ; her eyes are dread with all 
Foretoken'd anguish of the battle-harm; 

She finds him, folded in his country's pall. 
One great look : then, with bursting heart, away ; 
To gaze no more upon that idol-clay. 

27 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



See the brave beast, man's mighty warrior-friend, 
Who shared the sweat of marching and the dint 

Of battle: dim eyes, knees no more to bend; 
Hoofs that drew Hghtning from the rock of 
flint; 

Those nostrils, gasping now, were trumpets then 

To tell his joy among the ranks of men. 

Scarce lifts he that great neck ; but e'en this morn 
That neck was clothed with thunder — from afar 

He smelled the battle; challenged death with 
scorn ; 
His deep flanks heaving in the joy of war. 

Butchers of mercy: pass the human corse, 

To end the anguish of the dying horse. 

"When comes our father to our prairie-home, 
Mother, who marched away with all the men?" 

"O children, I am told he soon will come. 
And soon will sit and play with us again," 

She said. But him the dark, rich earth shall hold. 

Far o'er the hills, till she herself be cold. 

Cold are the splendors of the constellations, 
Whenas they spring from the sky-bosom forth ; 

Cold are the spear-vibrating coruscations. 
In that strange, silent midnight of the north ; 

Heraldic Erebus adorns his shield 

With lances argent, on a sable field. 

Cold is the kiss that falls upon the brow 

Still crown'd with beauty, but unmoved by 
breath ; 
That kiss would once have waked a smile ; but now, 
28 



and Other Poems 



It falls like sunlight on the Arctic death; 
Like rose-leaves falling on the frozen ground: 
Sad kisses these, that wake nor smile nor sound. 

But mournfullest of all the mourning this : 

When one is buried who hath none to mourn; 

Who from no dear embrace, no clinging kiss 
Went forth to battle and the sable bourne. 

Yes, the unlov'd can fight, the unlov'd can fall, 

And the lone heart be rolled in glory's pall; 

The emperor, amid his pillar'd Rome, 

Wails : "Give me back my legions" — but in vain ; 

From dark Hercynian wood they cannot come; 
The world's most skilful slayers there are slain. 

But they who sent our armies, South or North, 

Shriek not to call the buried heroes forth. 

Yet some there were, who, number'd with the dead, 
From moribund and mortal heap arose; 

Whose lifted face, defiled with battle-red, 
A resurrection seemed to friends and foes. 

Ghostlier than dead or dying he is deemed 

Who was not of death's number, but so seemed. 

And must the grave become a battle-field, 

See God's own acre, plow'd with shot and shell? 

Here there are dead beneath the sod conceal'd; 
Must dead be piled 'tween grass and sky as well ? 

Ev'n so, for Death's a tiger, and will slay 

Beyond what he can swallow in a day. 

For, as a miser, who of golden store 

Hath gathered precious pieces, one by one. 
And in dim chamber counts and gloats them o'er, 
29 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



And guards the slowly-growing pile alone: 
Then, sudden, is made rich beyond his dreams — 
Some flooding of Pactolus' shining streams, 

So, greedy Death, on Cemetery Hill, 

Through summers and through winters, gathered 
slow 
His prizes costly, coveted; and still 

Watched over them, in sunshine or in snow, 
Till uncaird Fortune swiftly came and passed, 
Then, heaps on heaps, his treasures are amassed. 



TO GETTYSBURG. 

A home of verdant peace thy thorpe has been ; 

But that sweet history is past; thy name 
Shall aye be heard, above the secular din. 

Resounded by the brazen trump of fame. 
But is it fame, or is it infamy, 
O Gettysburg, these days confer on thee ? 

If that old sentence was indeed a curse: 

''Dust art thou, and to dust shalt thou return," 

Then art thou not earth's better, but her worse; 
What art thou, but an over-crowded urn ? 

If brother's blood from the red ground do cry. 

How thou must din the Majesty on high? 

30 



and Other Poems 



The voiceless grandeur of an ancient fane 
Broods o'er its dead, in crypt or coffin sealed; 

Silence, spread wings o'er Gettysburg again, 
And hush the clamors of the weary field. 

Here Freedom sank, and breathed expiring breath, 

Here Freedom rose, victorious over death. 

But while the earth is still, the heavenly host 
List to the fanfare of some angel-choir : 

Evangel-trumps they blow, along the coast 
Of crystal sea — of crystal mixed with fire. 

Thy silence, Gettysburg, accordeth well 

With songs of heaven and with groans of hell. 

O Gettysburg, thy glorious heaps of dead, 
In thousand forms of battle-chaos hurled, 

How do they make so small a stain of red 
Upon the emerald and the sapphire world? 

Henceforth, in all her summer-splendor drest, 

'Tis but a ruby on her fountain-breast. 

Thy burg was like that dubious star that flashed, 
In Perseus, bright as Sirius or Altair, 

Then sank to Pleiad dimness as abashed. 
Thou hadst thy glory thrust upon thee there ; 

The eyes of all the earth were fixed on thee; 

Three days were thine for immortality. 

May they remind us of those silent days, 
Between the vacant cross and vacant tomb; 

When heaven bent over earth in patient maze, 
And waited for the mystery to ungloom. 

Angels, whose home is in the lamps of fire. 

Must wait and learn, when those three days expire. 

31 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



THEIR MONUMENT. 

Memorial they have raised more hard than brass, 
Which no destroying storm may e'er dissolve ; 

Though change, on wings invincible, shall pass, 
And rushing time on wheels of years revolve: 

As steadfast sunlight rests on fickle waves, 

Unchanging glory shall illume their graves. 

Hither they marched, here fought they, and here 
fell; 

Here have they left their names for evermore ; 
Names unforgot, when the last fragment-shell 

Or sword hath turned again to russet ore; 
Till the last trumpet shall divide the sky, 
Thine echoes, Gettysburg, can never die. 

But there are sounds that may not mingle here, 
Sounds as of Rachel's wailing for her sons ; 

In fifty thousand homes the cry, the tear. 

Are marked by him that hears these burial guns. 

Great God of armies: Sovereign battle-Lord, 

These lamentations in thine ears accord. 

To-day begins the mourning, that shall end 
Only when the great nation is no more; 

What life, what love, what glory now descend 
Adown the dark path to the sunless shore ? 

Few hands may bear them to the silent bourne. 

But O, how many million hearts shall mourn. 

So move we on, with rhythmic tramp and slow, 
To hide their limbs that ne'er again shall march ; 

To hide them from the wintry storm and snow, 
To hide them from the summer suns that parch; 

To leave them, in this grand and sweet July, 

Beneath that sapphire monumental sky. 

32 



and Other Poems 



The wandering murmur of the ancient foam, 
That coldly blossoms on the barren sea, 

Still moving westward, never finds a home. 
Nor ceases ever from its threnody: 

Now, over this predestined field of slaughters, 

Like sound be heard, the sound of many waters. 

And while we tombward bear each sacred form, 
Roll'd in the banner that was all his pride, 

Then let be heard the chorus of the storm. 
Voice of Jehovah let the flames divide: 

When with electric fire the dark cloud sunders, 

Such sound be heard — the sound of mighty thun- 
ders. 

And let a solitary bugle blow, 

(A thousand bugles will not stir the slain) 
And let us feign the mighty dead below 

Once more to hear the battle-news are fain; 
And let them in their long, long ranks make room, 
For these red heroes borne unto the tomb. 

And here, through ages shall the pilgrims come, 
To read the treasured names in brass or stone; 

And here the morning and the evening drum 
Will answer to the church-bell's music lone: 

For now the anguish and the horror cease, 

And through the vale the breath of God says: 
Peace. 

O earthy man, to man's brown earth returned, 
O wandering dust, unto its dust come home ; 

Ashes, that once were fire, to ashes burn'd, 
Come, hide, O hide, beneath the turf and loam ; 

Hide all those wounds beneath the grassy screen ; 

Change gray and blue to summer robes of green. 
33 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



THE P^AN. 

Great land: thy first true Independence-day 
Out of the depths of time hath dawned at last. 

The blot on thine escutcheon's washed away; 
Surely, the bitterness of death is past; 

Swifter than Agamemnon's post of fire. 

The psean hastens on its path of wire. 

So let the pall of war-smoke roll away, 
So let the giant west-wind clear the sky. 

The hill-sides hail the untormented day, 

And heaven and earth give back the sweet July ; 

Nought but the summer glory intervene 

The stained earth and the pure heavens between. 

The thunder of this day is as a bell, 
Tolling departure of the ancient Woe, 

Departing as a ruin'd star that fell, 

And plunged forever in the gulf below; 

Down, Hke a millstone in the middle sea. 

Bondage is fall'n, and all the land is free. 

"Proclaim ye liberty through all the land, 
To all the inhabitants thereof" — the Voice 

That flashed out light from darkness by command, 
With trump of jubilation sounds; ''Rejoice." 

Roll from the nation, Shame, forever roll, 

And Bondage, crumble like a burning scroll. 

So let a vaster ether be diffused. 

And more effulgent stars illume the throne; 
More purple and more golden light than used 

To make the morning and the evening known ; 
And mightier music for the march of God, 
Whose victor-feet through death to life have trod. 

34 



and Other Poems 



Out where the tides pelagic swing and boom, 

Out where the furrowing tempest plows in wrath, 

Out where the solemn, solid fog-banks loom 
Athwart the steaming monster's rushing path, 

Hear him that sits the water-floods above: 

"Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof." 

Let deep to deep, in booming acclamation, 

Atlantic, O Pacific, call to thee: 
Hail, happy millions of Titanic nation, 

Free all, free ever, O, forever free. 
The God of Gilgal cries : "Behold to-day 
Your black reproach forever roll'd away." 

Long mountains, echo now for jubilation. 

Lakes of the northern splendor, shine for joy; 

Wild forests, clap your hands in exultation, 
Father of waters, flow without annoy; 

Ye rippling, ripening prairie-harvests, wave: 

Jehovah saith: "Emancipate the slave." 

The pines of Maine unto the mightier pines 
Of Oregon, send greeting: Brothers tall. 

Heard ye the keynote from the battle-lines? 
Now tune your branches into harpstrings all, 

And let a thousand leagues of air be breath, 

And sing the glory that ascends from death. 

Thou stony Hon upon Marathon, 

Rouse thee again beside that lonely shore: 
Lion of Chaeronaea, every stone 

Take shape, and dominate the fields once more. 
Stern monuments are ye, to mark the fields 
Where freedom triumphs, and where freedom 
yields. 

35 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



And thou, O anguished Hon of Lucerne, 

Lift stricken head from unforsaken shield; 

Lion of Waterloo, thy vision turn 

Not over France, but to this vaster field; 

For that great Anguish which engendered thee, 

Gave birth to Victory here, beyond the sea. 



THE SONG OF AFRICA. 

Oceanus sent all his sweet-voiced daughters, 
High o'er the black jags of Caucasian chasm. 

High o'er the countless laughter of the waters; 
They sang to soothe the scornful Titan's spasm; 

With hymns accordant to the ocean's boom 

They lulled the rhythmic anguish of that doom. 

The sorrowing old sea, on Afric's shore, 

Hath moaned in thirty thousand miles of foam; 

No voice less mighty could thy woes deplore. 
Or sing the chorus of thine ancient doom; 

Where Bab-el-Mandeb rolls its tide of tears, 

Far to the stormy Cape of hopes and fears. 

The black Prometheus, nail'd high in his chasm, 

Had oceanic hope of freedom yet, 
Until he saw, with hope's expiring spasm. 

The eagle to the vulture's task was set. 
Ill fared it with the bondman, Robert Lee, 
So grand antagonist to find in thee. 

36 



and Other Poems 



Thou heir of proud Virginia's old renown, 
How hast thou chosen the less noble part? 

How hast thou brought thine eagle-genius down, 
To strike the wedge through Freedom's wounded 
heart ; 

Is this condign for thee, field-marshal grand, 

To rend the vitals of the hearth-fire land ? 

Beneath great Pompey's sculptur'd eidolon, 

While many blades sought the dictator's breast, 

Twas Friendship's blow that brought the Caesar 
down ; 
"Thou, Brutus, too," — the deepest stab exprest; 

Then fled that awful spirit, with a groan, 

Indignant fled, into the vast unknown. 

Could thy bland gaze, majestic Washington, 
Scornful regard the bondman's suppliant hand? 

Yet at thy marble feet what crimes are done, ^ 

Thou chieftain-father of thy fatherland: 

Wert thou at Gettysburg, ah, would thy glaive 

Be cast into the scale against the slave? 

For is not every soul porphyrogene. 

While that first proclamation's unrepealed? 

**We make man in our image" — and I ween 

God's image must be free ; 'tis signed and sealed 

In red; and covenanted in his plan: 

"Render to man what things belong to man." 

The hoary, sightless rhapsodist of Troy 

Who wandered singing by the singing waves. 

Chanting the battle-din and battle-joy. 
Pronounced the utmost of the doom of slaves: 

"The day that takes man's liberty, that day 

Takes half his valor and his worth away." 

37 



%; 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



What then, what then, is fitting we should say 
Of that high day that makes the bondman free? 

How shall we speak the glory of that day, 
Stupendous increment of liberty : 

O most like his Creator man speaks now : 

"With this vast heritage I thee endow," 

As by the light stroke of a royal sword 
A noble transformation oft was wrought, 

And he that knelt a serf, uprose a lord — 

See, from the battle-throes, a nation brought; 

See, the dark millions are transfigured now, 

A heaven-born glory burning on their brow. 

The day that gives man liberty, what then ? 

That lifts him from the oecumenic scorn, 
Makes him the image of his God again. 

Crowns him with that whereunto he was born, 
Gives him the right his inward self to be. 
Alone submiss to God eternal, Free. 

Lift up the voice, O thou poor Africa, 

The yoke, the brand, the fetter and the scourge, 

Thy God hath sunk them like a millstone, ah, 
Yes, hurled them whence they never shall 
emerge ; 

The hand that smote them is no hand of mail. 

But that same hand that felt the Roman nail. 

Hark to the sable choir : "Ride on, King Jesus,. 

King Jesus, no man can a-hinder thee; 
Thine everlasting arm, Jehovah, frees us." 

Deem ye the rhymes too rude ; so may it be. 
But while ye delicately test the song, 
The God of battles hath made right the wrong. 

38 



and Other Poems 



Hark 3^et again: "Swing low, sweet chariot:"* 
So chants and chimes the Ethiopian choir; 

For now they see, their God hath ne'er forgot ; 
His wheels roll on, through cloud, and storm, and 
fire; 

Shall not their weary hearts within them burn, 

Who God's own meaning in this fight discern ? 

For in the thing wherein the sons of men 
Most proudly dealt. He is above them still ; 

What they devise, by league, or sword, or pen, 
Is found the purpose of his changeless will; 

And when their words and works are spoke and 
past, 

They have sub-wrought his faultless plan at last. 

So, ne'er too high a scale can music climb, 

(Like rising song-bird, that would sing alone) 

Ascending, still ascending, the sublime 
Unmeasur'd altitude beneath the throne; 

And hovering there, to pour in ecstasy 

The warblings of the heart, O God, to thee. 

God hath unsaid the word of ancient doom, 
God hath turned back the dial of his wrath ; 

For now, the Attainder-curse no more shall loom 
A grisly shadow on thy trembling path; 

Across the horrors of the middle sea, 

Jehovah thunders : "All thy sons are free." 

O sound of joyaunce, sound of triumph — Free : 
Sound as of Miriam's tambour by the shore. 

Ineffable to those that bounden be; 

Piercing the captive's heart unto the core: 

O voice, sweet as from singing heaven that fell. 

Voice, sweet enough for song of Seraph-el. 

39 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Freedom, thou wakest in the human soul 
Orchestral music — touching every string; 

Making all passions one resounding whole ; 
Lifting the man on bright, victorious wing. 

Proclaim it then — with timbrel, string, and horn: 

God's gift to every life of woman born. 

Hark to the sable choir, with throats sonorous : 
**Go down, Moses, 'way down to Egypt land ; 

Tell ole Pharaoh" — deep bass now rules the chorus, 
*To let my people go" — 'tis God's command; 

Yes, Moses with his rod hath smit the sea, 

And myriads march to that high trumpet: *Tree." 



DIVINE PRAISE FROM HUMAN WRATH. 

The lov'd apostle wept that none was found 
Worthy to ope the Providential book; 

Till from a-near the throne came seraph-sound: 
''Weep not; to Judah's Lamb and Lion look; 

Immanuel's victorious, pierced hands 

Worthy are found to loose the seals and bands." 

Field-marshal of the starry armies all, 

Commanding day and dark, and blood and pain — 
With anguish'd torsion of this lesser ball 

Moving it on to what sublimer gain ? 
May we not find, one battle-day appears 
To thee, Immutable, a thousand years? 
40 



and Other Poems 



Prophet, that with weak hands and weary heart, 
Hast found the world too many and too strong: 

Behold the arms that stand upon thy part; 
Ten thousand times ten thousand — sky-born 
throng. 

Lift up, lift up thine eyes — a little higher, 

Behold the chariot and the steeds of fire. 

Then see the drunkard's home; recoil not there; 

In every corner see a demon lower. 
Disease and Hunger, Terror and Despair. 

Behold the wife, the trampled, wilted flower; 
Behold the children : sad, degenerate brood. 
And can He make all this to work for good? 

Behold the wake of that foul slaver-ship, 

Which madly from the naval vengeance flies. 

And leaves behind the victims of the whip 
Hurl'd overboard, the ravening ocean's prize ; 

Short while, the sea with yells and forms is filled ; 

Dark forms, sharp yells — to be effaced and stilled. 

Behold, the streets of Saint Bartholomew ; 

Behold, Waldensian blood on Alpine snows, 
Where crown'd and mitred hate the righteous slew ; 

See where the hell-fed pyre of Smithfield glows : 
Can thus the God of love his plan fulfil. 
And make these horrors serve his gracious will? 

Behold, Immanuel may not fail nor blench. 
But mild and mighty as the sunlight He; 

Nor bruis'd reed break, nor smoking flax will 
quench. 
Till he have Judgment brought to Victory. 

Though our innumerable discords boom, 

The shrieks of anguish and the knells of doom. 

41 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



The hates, the wraths, the strifes, the wars, the dis- 
mal 

Long catalogue of terrene things infernal. 
Are islands in the shoreless and abysmal 

Mysterious ocean of the Love eternal: 
So, whether ocean-breadth, or point of land, 
His purpose stands, and shall forever stand. 

And all the discords of the earth ascending, 
Where, in eternity doth melt our day, 

Around his throne and in his ears are blending. 
Sweeter than woodland warbles of the May; 

All things attun'd to make harmonious hymns. 

Where peace is wingless and no sunset dims. 



42 



NATIONAL THEMES 



A REVOLUTION BACKWARD. 

Hath grand America but lifted up 

The sunburn'd millions, thus to cast them down ; 
Dash from their lips the brimming crystal cup; 

Tear from their brows the precious civic crown? 
What honors all men, and what no man harms, 
The freedman's armor and the freeman's arms? 

How far from Christ, the bruised reed to break; 

How strange to him, the smoking flax to quench ? 
Although that reed in every wind may shake. 

The fuming stalk may make less light than 
stench — 
Bind up the broken and anoint the dim. 
So shall ye best fulfil the work of Him. 

Know ye not, if ye will reverse the hand 
Upon Time's dial, from the shadows forth, 

Soon, on your walls, shall "Mene, Tekel" stand. 
And this will happen, be it South or North. 

Is there more rash emprise beneath the sun, 

Shall politics undo what God hath done? 

Dark faces, millions of them, onward go — 
The march of many waters — this black sea, 

As ye seek or seek not to chain its flow. 
An Axeinos* or Euxeinos shall be. 

But mind, that if He be too long withstood, 

Our God might turn the waters into blood. 



♦The Black Sea was regularly called by the Greeks 
Euxeinos, the Friendly; but sometimes, Axeinos, the 
Hostile. 

45 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



"What, are you echoing ante-bellum rant? 

What, are you threatening us another war?" 
Far, far from that; we are too complaisant; 

We'd fight the Haytians, Philippines; we are 
More like to flatter you ; but we cannot 
Eke flatter the Armipotent, God wot. 

Bull-fighters, matched against a red-eyed brute, 
Are low-down, though the arena shake with 
cheers ; 

And Indian-fighters, though they ride and shoot, 
Are scarce regarded as prime chevaliers ; 

But they that are God-fighters, great or small, 

Will find the worst enlistment of them all. 

That king, enthroned upon the strand, forenenst 
The climbing tide, was fain to move his chair ; 

The Pope, who aimed his thunderbolt against 
The comet, failed to singe its shining hair; 

For stars and waters on God's errands run. 

And may not pause, e'en to salute the sun. 

And he that lashed the Hellespont — ^his scourge 
Tore many a furrow ; but the waters roared 

With multitudinous laughter, while the surge 
Insurgent dashed his pontoons ; and ignored 

The anger of the master, at whose look 

The tribes from Indus to Maeander shook. 

Have ye not learned, when God asserts his right, 
He splits the mountain and divides the sea; 

He makes the stars upon their courses fight; 
Th' eternal gates send forth their chivalry, 

As when the Maccabsean prayed with thanks, 

Then burst, like earthquake, on the brass phalanx. 

46 



and Other Poems 



Too soon the Freedman saw the glorious sight, 
Too full his bosom, and too bright his eyes; 

Unsay God's fiat; cry: Let there be night, 
And let it roll upon him from the skies. 

Let him go down the mount; nor shall he thus 

Behold the prospect that's unrolled to us. 

Too rashly hath he left the Troglodytes ; 

Too straight his spine, his forehead much too 
high; 
We must not dazzle him with heavenly lights. 

Too drunk with freedom, and too rich in sky. 
There's risk he may a little dance or rave, 
So, push him back into the rotting cave. 

Command again : Let be a firmament 

That shall divide the white man from the black, 
And let it stand, eternally unrent, 

A great gulf fixed, that each may keep his track ; 
No matter how He made it at the first. 
This is a white man's earth — 'tis that, or burst. 

He's on the nation's highway, turn him back; 

What right has he with us to walk abreast ? 
Or, let him take the by-path for his track. 

Or fall into the rear, with humbler crest. 
Until the Ethiopian change his skin. 
He is the Out, nor shall his kind get in. 

Remind him of the old paternal curse. 
Remind him of the post-diluvian doom. 

His only chariot is the waiting hearse; 
His only triumph is the leveling tomb. 

Ye have your Samson, but ye want him blind, 

To whom not even hope remains behind. 

47 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Tell him to walk beside that bitter lake 

That lies of old beneath the frown of heaven; 

With those sulphuric waters bid him slake 

That thirst, which on the Nebo-mount was given ; 

"Go there," tell him, "be satisfied or die." 

Where fish swim not, and birds may hardly fly. 

Made by God, made like God, and made for God, 
Will ye, blasphemers, say he's made for you? 

Ye'll guide and rule him with your curb and rod — 
Convenient theory, if it were true. 

Ye claim to use him for your own account, 

As Sapor used Valerian, but to mount? 

Behold the Samson, of his honors shorn. 

Hailed by the myriad jeer, the myriad frown; 

Bowing himself beneath the mass of scorn; 

But when he bowed himself, how much came 
down? 

And if too far ye bend the Samson's back, 

What pillars are these that will rock and crack? 

What say ye, vast and disappointed train, 

On whom this shameful, hard bereavement falls? 

Say like Ulysses, smit where he should reign. 
Say like Ulysses, alien in his halls. 

With patient vengeance and with inward scorn : 

"Bear this, my heart, for thou hast heavier borne." 

Ye know the bitterness of alien bread, 

Ye know the hardness of the stranger's stairs ; 

The tears that burn, unwept, within the head, 
The shame fire, to burst forth that never dares ; 

And that unwritten heritage of groans. 

Which noon to night, and night to morn postpones. 

48 



and Other Poems 



His voice who bears th' eternal style, "I AM" 
Sundered the waters of the bloody sea ; 

Ye marched by millions at his oriflamme; 

Dry-shod ye walked, and men acclaimed you free. 

Cast down, but not destroyed, by faith avow, 

He hath not led you thus, to leave you now. 



A CENTENNIAL ODE. 

Read in the Academy of Music, New York, Decora- 
tion Day, 1876, at Reunion of the Grand Army of the 
Republic. 

The sun, like a bloody shield. 

On the mountain's shoulder hung ; 
The clefts of the mountain, reveal'd, 
In sudden glory sprung ; 
Like flickering ember-light, that falls 
On armor hanging in ancient halls. 
The sunset-glory flashed on the mountain walls. 

The sea-waves blossomed in foam. 

The sky was shot with fire, 
And up in the peak of the twilight dome, 
I beheld the day expire ; 
The stars stepped out from the day's eclipse. 
The waves grew cold where the sea-gull dips, 
And sails incarnadine grew dim on flying ships. 

Then I saw on the mountain's height, 

Where the white clouds love to rest, 
A hundred figures, in fading light. 
That moved to the unseen west ; 
Their lifted hands from afar I discerned, 
Their robes that faint in a halo burned. 
Their faces, from moment to moment that back- 
ward turned. 
49 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



I heard a voice that cried: 

'Tis the years of the century o'er ; 
They are climbing the mountain side, 
They will march to the sunset-shore; 
But here they halt, in high retreat, 
A moment, to sing their welcome sweet, 
To the new and mightier years, that follow their 
vanishing feet. 

And five of those years were red 

As they turned on their awful path, 
With garments like them that tread 
In the winepress of civil wrath. 
But the voice cried : Lo, the fraternal stain, 
Through ages of ages shall come not again ; 
The wrath of the five red years by the dust of the 
slain is slain. 

Then I saw on the strip of sand. 

Between the hills and the foam, 
A hundred creatures grand, 
The years that are yet to come. 
Their brows were bright, their eyes were young, 
The harps they held were smitten, and rung, 
Keeping murmurous time to the song the old years 
sung. 

The song of a hundred years — 

Let it sound o'er the soldiers' graves ; 
No more shall ye water with tears 
The dust of the fallen braves; 
Shrine, where the heart of a nation turns, 
Altar, where memory quenchless burns. 
Earth, where perishing flowers are strown on per- 
ished urns. 

50 



and Other Poems 



O flowers, ye are not partial; 
Ye will blossom all the same, 
O'er the limbs that once were martial. 
O'er the hearts that once were flame. 
Ye care not, flowers, for the right or wrong; 
Ye ask not who were the weak or strong; 
But north or south ye sweeten the dust of death's 
impartial throng. 

In the breast of the great earth-mother, 
Northman and Southman they sleep; 
Like a brother beside a brother, 
In that silence vast and deep. 
The Night folds both in her spangled pall, 
The heedless snows on both shall fall, 
And the sweet breath of flowers perfumes them 
kindly all. 

Above them the robins will twitter. 
The cool green grass will spring, 
The butterflies flash and flitter. 
And the happy children sing. 
They are joined at last, beneath the mould, 
Northman brave, and Southman bold; 
And the red-hot heart of war must here at last be 
cold. 

O hundred years to come. 

Hear the song of the years gone by ; 
A hundred times the flowers will bloom. 
And a hundred times will die; 
But amid them all one flower will blow, 
Bedewed with blood, and whiter than snow. 
To bloom, while birds shall sing, hearts lovfe, or 
fountains flow. 



SI 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



AD MAGNAM BRITANNIAM 

1837-1897. 

O Britain: on thy shoulders broad, 

Thou bearest an Atlantic load; 

Nor canst thou find a Hercules 

To take thy place between the seas, 

And rid thee, for one easeful hour, 

Of that great weight which is thy dower. 

Four hundred millions, each a soul, 

Confess thy kindred or control; 

Is it not God hath laid on thee 

The burden of the land and sea ? 

The turret-crown still rims thy brow, 

No "Niobe of nations" thou. 

Ah, now, profound thy bosom heaves, 
Press'd as a cart beneath the sheaves; 
Great is thy glory, great thy cares, 
For see, thy doom is linked with theirs: 
Thy failure were like Samson's fall. 
In thy great ruin crushing all. 

Voices thou heardst: "Said we not well, 
That thou hast dared the undareable? 
Thy vast and incoherent weight 
Must fall, a loose conglomerate." 
But let them die upon the shore; 
Voices they are, and nothing more. 

They 'sdained to see that in thy pairi 
The wrong of ages rights again; 
The fruits of time and hope shall yet 

52 



and Other Poems 



Be garnered through thy blood and sweat ; 
For earth's sake thou canst not be free, 
'Tis thy high rank that bindeth thee. 

And if, in long-postponed war, 

The gates of Janus opened are. 

Then may thy thunderbolted hand 

Hurl flame around the foam-girt land; 

Till every red Armada deck 

Shall spread thy seas with heaving wreck. 

As when Enkelados unbends, 
The lonely ^tna rocks and rends — 
As down swart Mauna Loa's sides 
Roll fiery to meet watery tides — 
As Jordan's swellings pass the shore, 
And wake the homeless lion's roar: 

See drowsy Britomart awake. 
Then feel the heart of Europe shake — 
Then see the lands of darkness rise, 
To catch the morning in her eyes — 
Then hear the links of bondage snap, 
Like trees beneath the thunderclap. 

As when, on the low Bengal shore, 
Up Hoogly sweeps the tidal bore. 
High-rolling, white, tremendous, swift, 
Till cabled merchantmen uplift — 
Yea, till the mighty anchor-chain 
Is burst, by Ocean's strength amain. 

If come the hour (which God forefend) 
When thou must face the woful end, 
And gird thyself to meet the doom 

53 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Of Troy, Tyre, Memphis, Carthage, Rome; 
And o'er thee blare, resounding wroth, 
The trump of future Hun or Goth; 

Then, staggering beneath the weight, 
That solemn load that makes thee great. 
Like Ajax, fronting the last light. 
Address thee to the final fight. 
O then, Great Britain, be thou great, 
With more than mortal force elate. 

Appealing to Sabaoth's Lord, 
Untwine thy broad caerulean sword ; 
Uplift thy ne'er abandon'd shield, 
A sunburst o'er the sombre field — 
Let the earth hear thy challenge high. 
Strike thy last stroke, and standing die. 



WHICH ENGLAND ART THOU NOW? 

The seas that thunder on thee. 

The winds that shout amain, 
Bring back, from lands beyond thee, 

This question, this refrain: 
'Ts Mene, Mene, Tekel, 

Inscribed across thy brow; 
Unveil thee, Hyde or Jekyll, 

Which England art thou now?" 

What saith the Brahman Ganges, 
What saith the Mizraim Nile, 

The Himalayan ranges, 
The giant Austral isle? 

The rose-cliffs of New Zealand, 

54 



and Other Poems 



The gray Laurentian wall : 
"How doth the ancient free land. 
The mother of us all ?" 

We knew an England, bloody 

And dark, with deeds of shame ; 
We knew an England, ruddy, 

With cheeks of orient flame. 
Is this the red of glory. 

Suffused on cheek and brow, 
Or the old, scarlet story ; 

Which England art thou now ? 

The lion and the leopards, 

With all their battle-flame, 
Avail not her that jeopards 

Her glory near to shame ; 
And they whose hearts have pandered 

To lust, or pride, or gold, 
O'er them the royal standard 

Will vainly be unrolled* 

Thy guns have blown the slaver 

From off the Libyan seas; 
But Indicus Papaver 

Hath drugged the weak Chinese; 
O, Borgia of the nations, 

Sure, this cannot be thou; 
Confront these twin citations, 

Which England art thou now? 

'Tis not thy guns volcanic, 

Thy thunder-laden deck. 
Can save thy heart from panic, 

Thy glory save from wreck. 

55 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Before the steel shot rattles 
On thy calcareous wall, 

Avouch the God of battles 
Lord of thy rise or fall. 

"The England of the ages 

With all thy goods endow;" 
So prayed the seers and sages ; 

Whose England art thou now? 
Discard the dubious masking, 

Thy central soul avow ; 
The tribes of earth are asking : 

"What England art thou now?" 

Fear no cloud-rack that gathers, 

On any circling sea, 
The Lord God of thy fathers 

Will still be God to thee. 
Fear no Satanic engines, 

To make thee quit the field; 
The God of love and vengeance 

Is still thy sun and shield. 

Stand up before the nations. 

Bare that tremendous brow; 
Answer our invocations: 

Which England art thou now? 
Awake, awake, and sing, land. 

And dwell no more in dust ; 
This, this is our true England, 

The Mighty and the Just. 



56 



UNFULFILLED RENOWN 



AN UNFULFILLED RENOWN. 

"The inheritors of unfulfilled renown." 

— Shelley, "Adonais." 
"Ah, vouloir a Thistoire aj outer des chapitres, 
Et puis, n'etre qu'un front qui se coUe a des vitres." 

— Edmond Rostand. 

Prelude. 

Ill-met, ill-mated sure, are Death and Youth; 
And as the angler drops the tiny fish, 
Hook-freed, back to its fluent amber home ; 

So Death might loose the bands, when he hath 

ta'en 
A stripling or a suckling ; for there are 
So many broken, frustrate things; half -pyramids; 

Columnar trees are broken by the storm. 
Right noble ships are broken on the shore, 
Right royal men have fallen in high place. 

And why should the young life be broken too? 
The pillar shattered, ere the architrave 
With Phidian handiwork be laid thereon ? 

Knowledge is linked to sorrow, as the slave 
Was chained to th' oar, on the Ligurian foam ; 
Taught in the school of storm, and toil, and pain. 

Preface. 

The tower, unfinished on the Shinar plain, 
The broken column in the Tadmor waste. 
The ship, that foundered, little from the shore. 
The watch-fire, quench'd ere came the prodigal; 
The fish, that failed to leap the cataract, 

59 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



The land-bird, that essayed too wide a gulf, 
The camel's bones, behind the caravan; 
The swimmer, who attained not to the beach. 
The traveler, dead before the founts of Nile, 
The standard-bearer, 'neath the bastion fairn. 
The Libyan, who but missed to shatter Rome; 
The prince in story, whose untimely bier 
Anticipates the coronation day; 
Death raced with Glory for a life, and won ; 
That beautiful and burden'd pilgrim, she 
Who failed a little space from Bethlehem, 
And (Hke the lily-stem that spends itself 
On one dear blossom) gave a life to earth, 
And passed from earth at parting of the ways. 

The longing passion-heart, broken and gone 

'Ere love's sweet breath had murmured: "Yes, I 

love." 
The eyes of earth, that have too soon beheld 
The perfect beauty of the universe. 
— Thus, crown and scepter but surmount the pall. 

Hear my words, mother, hide them in your heart. 
They talked of me as of a prodigy ; 
Said that I had a genius, and great things 
Would yet be done by me ; and at such words 
I saw you shake your head, as if you feared 
My head would soon be turned ; but are there not 
Some things besides a little foolish praise 
To turn men's heads ; and my poor head is not 
So lightly swivelled, like a weather-cock, 
To gyrate at each warm breath of men's lungs. 
Nor let me even call it foolish praise ; 
The highest wisdom is, to utter praise. 
Harmonious with the elder voice of truth. 
To have a genius is to see more down 
60 



and Other Poems 



Into the sombre heart of man ; that scene 
Where death reigns silent in the land of cold, 
The zero absolute from warmth of God. 
Thus, as when studying the moon's face, 
The clearer glass more clearly demonstrates 
That in that wrinkled orb there is no life, 
Nor air, nor fire, nor sea — a planet-slag — 
So, higher genius sees the lower down. 
And while the common man walks common fields, 
The genius to Avernus hath gone down. 
Amid the rivers dark, and sighing shades. 

Sad mother : is it not a perilous gift 
To see a little farther than your kind ? 
The child, that plays upon the foaming shore 
Knows sand, and shell, and foam, and sees afar 
The shining network of uncounted waves, 
Wherein the sun's illustrious image, caught, 
Is shattered to a thousand shards of light. 
The diver, sinking to unfoaming depth, 
To grope in green subaqueous twilight, sees 
Old wrecks around him lie, and monstrous forms 
Like meteors, swift and silent, gliding by. 

Whether of these enjoys the ocean more? 

Am I not vaster by experience 
Than Sophokles or Shakespeare, in that they 
Could only write their tragedies, while I 
Have lived mine, and absorbed it to the soul? 
To be, to do, to suffer, — I have been; 
Title to immortality is mine. 
Now, as the planet- fragment, in its rush. 
Passing through some brief arc of atmosphere, 
Flames far (ill-omen'd as Althaea's brand) 
Shedding a sudden glory, and expires ; 
And what was for a moment various flame, 
Is turned for ages into cosmic dust; 
6i 



J'he Battle of Gettysburg 



"Dust art thou, and to dust shalt thou return ;" 
And art thou, then, so much concerned to shine, 
While passing through thine earthly arc of air? 

And I have suffered; for creative power 
Can make dust capable of pain or joy. 
Existence, then, and pain, my double dower; 
I've been and suffered, if I have not Done. 
I have lived much in little while, much felt, 
Much suffered, little attempted, and less done. 

Sometimes, indeed, the deeply wounded soul 
Too wildly seeks to utter all its pain. 
And too much life flows with the utterance; as 
Epaminondas plucked the steel, and died. 

Thou art no Spartan mother, mother mine: 
And thou wilt not despise me, that I've come, 
After this dolorous rout of all my hopes, 
Without my shield, from a fight too great for me. 
True, I had smelled the battle from afar. 
The thunder of the captains and the shout 
Had heard; and with a joy ineffable 
Of battle, I moved to meet the armed men ; 
And there was peal, and blast, and neigh, and stamp, 
And clash, and clang; a thousand challenges, 
With many a thousand answers — and along 
The line, were dints upon a thousand shields. 
And ranks of spears waved up and down, like reeds. 
That bend in flood ; and spears were heard to crash, 
Like slim tall trees, that crash along the path 
Of thunder, when the black tornado smites; 
Days of young joy, wherein I leaped to hear 
The thunder of the captains, and the shout 
Of nations trampling on the grassy floor. 
The clamor of the imperial trumpet's voice. 
And, mingling with the trumpet's haughty roll, 
The brave antiphonal of neighing steeds, 
Whose hoof-beats drum the hollow-breasted earth; 
62 



and Other Poems 



The glorious jingling of the bits and spurs, 
The very rhythm and poetry of war; 
Quick-flaming eyes of horses and of men, 
Loud, eager breath of men and horses, too. 
Vapor from lungs that soon shall steam no more — 
Sword, saddle, gauntlet, starry helm and plume, 
(Plume like the pine that bends above a cliff) 
*'With boots like bastions," as the imperial-brow'd 
And olive-tinted Corsican ordained ; 
The thunder-march of those Cyclopean steeds, 
With men that sat like Centaurs, and the flash 
Of thousand sabres, simultaneously 
Coruscant all along the billowing rank. 
Like lightning traversing a stretch of cloud. 
Of battle such as this I had the joy. 
But Victory had wings, and fled from me. 

Oh, to have been one moment in full bloom. 
The sweet triumphant moment, if but one. 
What slow, molecular changes must have been, 
What ceaseless, unstilled beating of the cells, 
To make the plant bloom after hundred years : 
But that brief bloom that crowns the century 
Is thought to countervail the process long. 
See there, enthroned upon the acropolis, 
(Like Cassiopeia, bright in starry chair) 
And flashing with the pillar'd Parthenon, 
Far-seen to the Acrocorinthian crag, 
Far-seen to heights of Argos on the south, 
The waves of Salamis beneath her feet. 
And Marathon not many miles away. 
The maiden champion of Athens, see ! 
But, transient is the blooming of that flower; 

Soon dimmed the brightness of the eye of Greece, 
Soon dulled the splendor of that carved gem, 

63 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Borne on the wealthy bosom of the earth; 
Brief is the glory, and the ruin long. 

To shine ; though it were like th' exploding star 
Which lit the ebon heavens with alarm, 
Which flamed for days in awful brilliancy, 
And made star-gazers shudder, murmuring: What 
Is happening in yon abysmal sky? 
What sudden conflagration in the wastes? 
Is it collision of a binary world. 
In mutual crash and mutual ruining; 
Where, ages whirling with incalculable 
Haste, and with aye an orbit smaller, aye 
A swifter self-involving narrower flight, 
Center of this groping for center of that, 
Like giant wrestlers in a burning room 
That grope and grip ; or, as the Danite blind 
Grappled for Harapha — so those twin orbs 
Become Jehovah's flint and steel, to strike 
Together, and turn their force ineffable 
Into one spark, that shall illuminate 
The desert darkness of a lonely sky. 

The Carian sire of history hath said. 

There is no pang, among the sons of men. 

Than this more hateful: To know many things, 

And have no power to master the event. 

Mind of Teiresias, in wisdom old, 

Cassandra's shining and Promethean eyes. 

These can foresee, foretell, but not forefend, 

The swift-approaching and expanding doom, 

Which, suddenly appearing in the west, 

A cloud no larger than man's hand, ascends 

And whirling comes, till all the heavens are dread 

With lurid vapor and with rending bolts. 

And the incalculably rushing blast 

Smites works of men with heaven's artillery: 

64 



and Other Poems 



Then, like toy-houses, labour'd streets go down, 
And many a virid human leaf is whirled 
From life's deciduous tree — a moment thus 
Divides all time from all eternity. 
A moment since — it was a garden of God 
Upon the earth ; and now, a howling waste. 

It has been said, or sung, to various tunes, 
That "de profundis" comes the poet's cry. 
Yes, poet's cry, or Titan's agony. 
But man needs no great deeps to be o'erwhelmed; 
One white-head billow, reaching for the shore, 
May do for him all that the abyss could do. 

'Tis not calamity can dwarf the soul; 
Mere pain may be as lightning to the mind, 
Revealing, rousing, energizing it. 
And stirring all its tingling powers anew. 
The lazy soldier sleeps, or games, or eats, 
Until the horizontal sudden flash 
For one prophetic moment antedates 
The word of thunder from the lips of steel, 
And the shot's earthquake-impact on the wall. 
Then hath he meat to eat peace knows not of. 
And feasts himself upon the joy of war. 
Finding his life amid the strokes of death. 
The son of Kish, how pusillanimous, 
Who, fearing to Idc crowned, in baggage hid ? 
But Saul, being crowned, shall wax magnanimous, 
Rousing a mind to match his giant frame. 
He hears the cry of Gilead, and sends back 
King's word amain: **Fear not; to-morrow, by 
That time the sun be hot, ye shall have help." 
The princeling, nurs'd in dalliance of court. 
May, in some fateful day in hall or field, 
Become the prince — approve himself the king; 
His crown become an aureole at the board 

65 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Of council, and his helm a guiding star 
Amid the night of battle. Character 
May be that lily that blooms best at night, 
In what oblivion of eld had lain 
The name of Xenophon, if he had not, 
(After the failure of the great emprise, 
Young Cyrus gone, Klearchos gone, and gone 
Thessalian Menon, Plato's friend) both found 
Himself, and found his opportunity. 
Th' immortal mercenary myriad 
Bewilder'd in Kardouchian tribes and snows, 
Squarely confronted death, as death looked down 
From glacial heights and arrow-bristling cliffs ; 
Made him their rearguard, lion of retreat. 
Still marching backward, keeping front to foe, 
Until the vanguard roared: *The Sea, the Sea." 

And hast thou buried all those gifts of heaven 
Beautiful powers, sweet faculties of good. 
For which no day of manifest use can come? 
There's many a shipwreck'd treasure in the sea, 
Whose latitude and longitude are known. 
Yet shall no diver to the world restore. 
Many the chidings for love-words not spoken, 
Many the chidings for high deeds not done; 
But pity, O pity be the heritage, 
Pity for him who longed, who would have done ; 
Who felt within himself some Samson-thews, 
Some kindling of the sacred altar-fires. 
But in the arena found no waiting hand 
To lead him to the pillars — wasted strength ; 
More vain than ocean's hammering on the crags; 
More vain than waving of the comet's hair ; 
An embryonic glory, dead ere born. 

Fm moved by faint and wavering consciousness 
That in this desert-soul the ruins lie 

66 



and Other Poems 



Of a wreck'd genius ; Tadmor in the waste ; 

Prostrate or frustrate columns of a fane 

That might have stood against the Athenian blue; 

Acanthus-leaves of poetry that grew 

Amid the squalid plinths of potter's clay. 

Oh, if that dream had e'er come true to me — 

Sweet dream of those Hellenic heathen — then 

Sound had been heard of undiscordant lyre, 

Which in this soul had bid the ruins rise, 

In order and proportion fair, against 

The azure vantage of the firmament. 

Heard I a voice Alcidean, that shook — 

Shook loose the great Skeleton's grip, and brought 

The sweet Alcestis to her lord and home; 

Were I but loosed from superincumbent doom, 

The triple generations entailed woe; 

The stone of death rolled back, and the faint life 

Forth-suramon'd to the glory of the day ; 

Had this but been my lot : Thy lot ? and Thou ? 

What art thou but a wintry, torpid fly. 

That's warmed a moment by December sun 

Upon the icy pane; move, buzz, and fall; 

No genial earth or summer is for thee." 

This is the sediment of life to me: 
Bitter, that I have failed in life to do 
The things my loved ones have believed that I 
Could do and would — the things they fondly 

thought 
Were marked for me by Providence divine. 
That thought distils a double bitterness; 
For it must seem, not only have I failed 
To satisfy anticipative pride, 
And helplessly have falsified the high 
Presage of friends prophetic; water, this, 
From Marah's well; with wormwood deep in- 
fused ; 

67 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



But I have also failed in the high quest 
To seek, to overtake, to find, to grasp 
What I am grasped for by that Wisdom high: 
This should be bitterness, by seven-fold 
More dense than absinth or the gall of asps; 
For, if it wring from me the distill'd tears, 
Harsh as the drops of the Gomorrhan sea, 
To know I've disappointed all the dreams 
And glad anticipations of my loved — 
Then who hath tears, in measure fit, to weep 
The failure of the half-girt soul to guard 
The charge laid on by Lord of heaven and earth? 
Time, which ameliorates the rugged lines 
Of stark events, and softens to a haze 
Seen through the atmosphere of memory, 
The things that pressed too close upon the soul, 
Softens and changes, yea, transfigures them, 
Till like the distant mountains, they grow dim 
In shadowy purple, nor man's eye is sure 
If it be cloud or mountain. Such our case; 
For Time and Memory conspire to weave 
Their web of dimness o'er the eyes of men: 
And if with hand iconoclast, we rend 
The veil, that we may see again the dark 
Harsh features of a melancholy past — 
So that our mountains must again o'erhang 
With all their crags of horror, all their chasms. 
And all their shivering and ill-omen'd woods ; 
Then — then, when time and memory have failed, 
Let Hope take up the bitter task — bright Hope — 
Backward let her project the giant light 
By which she gilds the peaks of coming days; 
So let the unmapp'd future and the past 
Known but too well, be one horizon all ; 
In the same radiance be illuminate ; 
Let the whole round be filled with light from Him 
68 



aifd Other Poems 



To whom the past and future are at one. 
I saw the sunset once, when half the heaven 
Was ermin'd o'er with woolly clouds, far up. 
The sunward side of every one of these 
Became a hillside pure, of yellow gold. 
And while I marveled at the wealth of God, 
Lavished — a moment's joy to darkening world — 
The golden hills to ruby mountains turned ; 
And so, meseemed, my God had said to me : 
"Didst thou think that gold beautiful, my child? 
But I will show thee beauty more than this; 
Behold my crimson jewels on the sky, 
And know that, as the ruby is precious far 
Beyond the gold, my beauteous things in price 
Are far beyond all rubies and all thoughts." 

I saw the morning-heaven transfigured once 
From glory unto glory; saw the clouds 
There, like a Persian army, broad of wing. 
O'er the vast ether-field, the cumuli 
Rolling in troops, and restless heaps and ranks. 
Mingled cserulean and argent arms, 
Driv'n onward by the giant Zephyrus, 
And tipt with flamelets of the blinking sun, 
Weaving an interchanging light and shade 
Moved on, with flash of armor and of arms. 

And all a wakeful night I watched the stars 
On silent march, until the wasted moon, 
Thin to a skeleton of her bright self, 
Stole westward through the hyacinthine sky. 
And vanished on the waiting breast of morn. 

So God, unchanging, makes all else to change. 
My soul enlarges, rises; I have heard 
The voice that comes from somewhere past the 

stars. 
Does not the servant rise when he hath heard 
The master's voice, though from another room? 

69 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



There was a prison once, whose walls did shrink ; 
But me — my prison-walls enlarge, roll back, 
Like those which God once for his servants shook, 
With earth's concussion, at the sound of hymns. 

The Nile-born prophet, upon Nebo's crown, 
Who saw the hills of God in order ranged 
On that side Jordan toward the sunset — lo, 
How God's great panorama was unrolled: 
Before his undimm'd eyes the glory spread 
Of morning on the mountains; Hermon's snow 
Flashed like a breastplate in the silent North, 
And in the South, the palms of Jericho 
Far-seen, a tufted verdure on the plain; 
While all those miles, between the palms and snow, 
Were backed with veteran mountains, rank on rank, 
Though here and there, a gray centurion 
A little o'er his fellows rears his top. 
The land of Judah to the utmost sea 
Was straight before him to the west; a land 
Of silver olives and of golden corn, 
Of diamond fountains and of opal streams, 
A land of milk and honey, oil and wine. 
The eye on Mizraim's queen that oped, and flags 
Of Nile, on Moab's voiceless mount will close ; 
That heaven-built watch-tovv^er of the holy land ; 
— Not voiceless — for the voice of God was there. 
To sing his servant, like a babe to rest ; 
Thus, weary, but not weak, with forty years 
Thrice-told, the mount of vision and of death 
He climbed, and laid his soul upon the breast 
Of God, his form upon the mamelon 
Of Nebo, where it swxlls from Pisgah's top ; 
And as the swallow, or the swan, from nest. 
Or northern lake, southward and sunward flies. 
He to bright warmth of everlasting love 
70 



and Other Poems 



Thence fled, and to the immemorial home. 

Not darkly borne am I, nor whirled afar, 

Like helmless vessel upon midnight sea, 

But moving onward, with the cosmic sweep 

Of planet or of star — and upward too. 

It grows not dark with me, though I have heard 

Aye as of death and darkness hand in hand; 

Round me a sweet, pure, radiance comes and comes. 

Which is not like the moonlight as it shines 

Down the long hillside to the silent lake; 

It is not like the solemn nebula 

That bursts in worlds upon the mighty glass, 

And brings the silence of the universe 

To the astronomer's awaken'd ear. 

It IS not as the west cloud, furnace-piled, 

Which the sun kindles for his funeral pyre; 

Nay, 'tis not even like that dearest light, 

The blue and silver splendor ere the dawn, 

When seemed the night forgot her one bright star. 

And left it burning till the sunlight came ; 

Nor as the band of light across the wave, 

When, like a wounded warrior from the field, 

The red sun rises, vast, from ocean's brim, 

And makes the cold Atlantic a red sea. 

Nor glow upon the mountain's morning-edge. 

That faintly burns through intervenient fog; 

Nor beams of crimson or of flashing blue 

Hurl'd by the jealous sun through rainbow glass 

'Mid the brown air of old cathedral shafts. 

It grows not dark with me, for God is light. 
And those are not the lights that kindle now; 
Mine eyes are opening now upon a light 
To which all these are bars of darkness. Light 
In which all suns and planets are as motes, 
That dance in sunbeams in your half-lit world. 
71 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



O Light of Light, and God of God, take me : 
Surely, the bitterness of death is past. 
For I am now in God, and God is love. 
The true light shines, the darkness passes on, 
For I am now in God, and God is light. 
I mourned and wept, because on earth the crown 
Of sweet accomplishment, victorious work, 
Was never given to me — never to me. 
Eternal One : canst thou, wilt thou, restore 
The lost years, ruin'd by the cankerworm. 
Those blasted years and f amish'd, of my soul ? 
Those years, crumbled in void unfathomable, 
Those steps of time by which I climbed, which now 
Have dropped and vanished in the gulf behind, 
And left me trembling on the dizzy verge. 
At whose foot foams immeasurable sea. 
Thou art the God of order, yet meseems 
Thou hast unsaid the fiat of my life ; 
And all the process and the order changed 
To weltering chaos back and brooding night. 

Arise, O vanished years, and stand with me: 
Ye waste, unharvested, and spectral years, 
Smit by the locust and the palmer-worm, 
By canker-worm and caterpillar peel'd. 
The Infinite hath said: *T will restore.*' 
Therefore, lost years, arise : He calls for you. 
The voice that shook the abyss of chaos lone. 
And gilded with the primal cosmic light 
The weltering vast of matter inchoate, 
That speaks souls quick from the abyss, and calls 
The things that are not, and, behold, they are — 
Shall gloriously compel thy mournful past 
In lovely palingenesis to rise. 
O happy greeting, when the shrivell'd hours 
That flew from thee like withered leaves, shall glow. 
Eternal beauty, immarcescible. 

72 



ANNALS OF THE POOR 



PARODY ON A POPULAR BALLAD. 

To walk close, close to her I tried ; 
But there were many walked beside. 
Why did so many others come 
To see my only Nellie home ? 

Her beauty needed no convoy ; 
She now was safe from all annoy ; 
The hands that wreck, the feet that roam. 
Might join in seeing Nellie home. 

They made that home fine as they could, 
And many a green tree, stout and good, 
Oak, maple, made their branches meet, 
To guard her home from August heat. 

They deck that home, and deck it well. 
With amaranth and immortelle; 
"But why not richer blooms?" said I. 
They said: "All other blooms would die." 

She would have loved it, had she seen — 
That splendid tabernacle green; 
But midnight on her eyes had come, 
Ere she could reach the little home. 

And ere she passed the threshold o'er, 
They gave me just one sweet glance more. 
I saw, and marked it with a moan, 
From that face, something great was gone. 

We passed into the entrance hall. 
We saw that it was very small. 
But when she reached her little flat. 
She did not seem to care for that. 

75 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



That entrance-hall, a fragrant screen 
Was hung with fronds of evergreen ; 
But there was smell of damp and loam, 
And here, at last, was Nellie home. 

And (what on earth could ne'er be said) 
I too shall rest in that green bed. 
And never shall I feel at home, 
Till I where Nellie is may come. 

Fve seen the mighty guards of stone 
That watch thy crypt, Napoleon; 
Where from lone ocean thou art come 
To sleep beneath the soldier's dome. 

Oh, not such Caryatides, 
No sculptured images like these 
Are needed to keep watch o'er thee, 
Where thou art laid, apart from me. 

As often as I tried to come 

I always found that there was some 

Inexorable Genius there, 

The Angel of the Sepulchre. 

Unwearied warder, there to wait, 
In rain or shine ; and early, late, 
He stood, but never oped the gate. 
As strong as heaven, as hard as fate. 

And Nellie now no more is seen, 
The grassy door is shut between; 
And I am gone, the West to roam. 
Still thinking: *1 saw Nellie home." 



76 



and Other Poems 



THE LOSS OF A FORTUNE. 

"In one hour, so creat riches is come to nought." 

— Holy Scripture. 

Home they bi^ught the dying boy, 

Poor, hard-featur'd city lad; 
Scarce had know the use of toy, 

GHmpses rare of flowers he had. 

"Babbled o' green fields" — ah, no; 

Not for him the like of that; 
But to work, and come, and go. 

Where his mother kept the flat. 

Waited she, in that poor home. 

And the crown of every day 
Was, when her one boy would come, 

And give her his scanty pay. 

He was beauteous in her eyes, 

She was angel unto him; 
If you saw them on this wise, 

Man, your strong eyes would be dim. 

Where's the mother with a boy. 
But has known this — felt it all? 

Mother, son, and mutual joy — 
Home as dear as it was small. 

Verily thou art a God 

Hiding glory back of gloom; 
Using lightning for thy rod. 

Turning daylight into doom. 

77 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



For, alas, there fell a day — 
Fell, as Lucifer from heaven. 

When the soul, from its wee clay- 
In one dreadful wrench was riven. 

Like the fish-boat on the Banks 
(Busy crew, with net or trawl), 

Iron mass a moment clanks 
On their wooden tub — that's all. 

So the mass of paint and steel 
Stains itself with childish blood ; 

Swift and soft on muffled wheel. 
Hurled him sidewise, like its mud. 

Big policeman walked alone 

Bore him up the stairs with ease; 

Big- policeman, with a groan 
Sat, and held him on his knees. 

Quick it came — the mother's shriek, 

Agony without alloy ; 
"Speak to me, my Jimmy, speak, 

'Tis your mother, Jimmy boy!" 

"Oh, the blood upon his head; 

What has happened him? A fall? 
Ach, don't tell me he is dead ; 

Sure, you don't mean that at all." 

Kindly neighbors tried to cheer; 

Made their voices strangely low; 
Whispered: "Don't take on so, dear; 

For you're very poor, you know." 

"Yes, we're poorest of the poor, 
Now that we have lost the lad ; 

Jimmy boy, he was, for sure. 
All the riches that we had." 

78 



and Other Poems 



THE WEE THING SMA\ 

The Woman : "Wha, wha is tirlin' at the pin, 
Wha rattlit at the gate?" 

The Wee Thing : 'It is the witness of thy sin. 

The love that's fell as hate." 

*'0 woman, dost thou ken me 
yet? 
Hast thou forgot thy fa'? 

woman, thou shalt ne'er for- 

get; 
I am the wee thing sma\ 

"Of me, of me, they hold no 
parle, 
Amang the sons o' men ; 

1 am the outcast o' the warl', 
Mither, lat me come ben." 

The Woman : "I canna, canna lat thee in ; 

I am too much afeard." 
The Wee Thing: "Fear, should hae come before 

thy sin, 

An' thou maun dree thy weird. 

"The years are gane, the years 
are seven, 
Since that day, black an' dour, 
When frae my mither I was 
riven, 
An' cast upon the muir. 

79 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



"Aneath the muirland's only tree, 
Aneath its michty bole, 

Was left to rot, the thing so wee, 
Within the rotten hole." 

The Woman : "I canna, canna hae thee noo, 
For my guidman to see ; 
O, if he were thy father too, 
It's happy I should be." 

The Wee Thing :*The ghaist moon glimmers fair, 

the nicht, 
On burn, an' brae, an' byre ; 
But I'm no cheered by ony licht. 
Nor warm by ony fire. 

"The kirkyard's crowded, on the 

brae, 
Wi' men, an' wives, an wains; 
But I maun wander, to an' frae, 
Amang the kirkyard stanes. 

"The ghaisties in the yard so 
braw, 
They winna lat me in. 
They hiss: Aroint thee, deevil 
sma', 
Thou art a child o' sin." 

The Woman : "Douce, happy man, wi' honest 

wife. 
An' wi' his childer three, 
How could I show him the wee 
life 
That ne'er lay on my knee?" 
80 



and Other Poems 



The Wee Thing: "The lambs are faulded frae the 

wat, 
An' warm an' safe the kye ; 
It is a gruesome thing to lat 
Your wee thing bide out-by. 

*The birds that are too sma' to 
sing 
Are cuddled in the nest ; 
They feel the fauld o' mither's 
wing, 
They love her downy breast. 

"Ah, mither, ne'er a hand to hap 
Your wee thing frae the 
storm ; 

Ah, mither, ne'er a woman's lap, 
To hauld the wee bit form." 

The Woman : "Thy faither's turned to dust an' 

bane, 
The brown leaves o'er him fa' ; 
'Tis scriven on the marble stane, 
How fine he was, an' a'." 

The Wee Thing : "I canna be so wee an' sma' 

That God should fail to see ; 
An' when he counts the murders 
a', 
Will he no think o' me? 

"Had I no soul at a', at a' ; 

When doth the soul begin ? 
How big must be a wee thing 
sma' 
To mak' its murder sin? 
8i 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



"Dark mither, this before we 
part, 
That never rest shalt win; 
Hadst thou me keepit on thy 
heart, 
God micht hae washed thy sin. 

"Nane askit, was it boy or girl, 
When I was thrown awa', 

An' I gave but one deein' skirl, 
Last o* the wee thing sma'. 

"That baby-skirl, so wee an' 
sma', 

Above the trumpet's din 
Ascended, like the angel's ca', 

The ear o' God to win. 

" 'Tis dawn ; an' I must rin my 
lane, 

Unhapp'd wi' turf an' clods, 
Nor scriven on a wee bit stane, 

That I am ane o' God's." 



AT RICHARD CAMERON'S GRAVE. 

"O, to be wi' you, Richie." 

— Alexander Peden, the Covenanter. 

To be with Richard Cameron, and the men that 

stood for God, 
In the snows and on the mountains, in the heath 
and in the wood: 

We well might wish it too. 
The men that stood upon the rock, while others 
played with sands, 
82 



and Other Poems 



Who held the truth of God in the grip of strenuous 
hands ; 

Ah, would we were with you. 

Thy fight is over, Richie, and thou hast past afar, 
To sing, "lo, triumphe," where the saints have rest 
from war, 

I think I hear their song. 
Thy sword was left for us below, thy crown is 

found above, 
Thy solemn thrill of battle is now the thrill of love; 
But we, O Lord, how long? 

Thou wast a man of war, Richie, and o'er thy moor- 
land grave 

Let blue-bell, thistle, heather, haw, their yearly tro- 
phies wave, 

Bright banners of the free ; 

For in the silent heaven of peace, peace doth thy 
heart enfold 

And in the blood-bought grave, peace, angel-ey'd, 
shall watch thy mold; 

So would I were with thee. 

For while thou liest there, my chief, enswath'd in 

burial-sark, 
The earth to me is waxing dim, and soon shall it be 
dark, 

And time is wet with tears. 
Bereft of thee, my comrade, of thy spirit firm as 

steel, — 
Thine arm from God a levin-bolt, thy voice a thun- 
der-peal — 

How sore the fight appears. 

83 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Hath God forgot our Scotland with her blood- 

sprent heath and snow, 
Where erst the blood of heroes, now the tears of 

women flow, 

To seal the covenant true? 
His eye is still on Scotland old, and every tufted 

mound 
That hides their dust and ashes, unto him is holy 

ground, 

As aught beneath the blue. 



RACHEL'S DEATH NEAR BETHLEHEM. 

"And there was still some way to come to Ephrath. 
.... and Rachel died, and was buried in the way to 
Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem). And Jacob set up a 
pillar upon her grave; the same is the Pillar of Rachel's 
grave unto this day. And it came to pass, as her soul was 
in departing (for she died), that she called his name, 
Son-of-my-sorrow ; but his father called him, Right-hand- 
son." 

Son of my sorrow, little babe, are thou ; 

With hands, instead of eyes, I'm fain to trace 
Thy form, so new to earth ; for now 

A cloud comes o'er my weary face. 

I am so tired in wrestling with strong death, 
That I must sleep, ev'n if I never wake; 

For me and for my babe there is not breath 
Enough, that both may take. 

And I must go, that this new face may come. 
And I must die, that this new life may be ; 

How sad that in this earth there is not room 
For both my babe and me. 

84 



and Other Poems 



Here, then, I pass the flickering torch to him 
Who shall be, to old age, his sire's delight ; 

And may that torch, which for me waxeth dim, 
For my babe burn most bright. 

Where is my sister Leah? she will weep; 

Her little sister could I be again, 
As in the Syrian days, among the sheep. 

We played, a happy twain. 

Ah, why should love come in to gender hate, 
Man's love, a wedge to rive the heart in twain ? 

Fondling a husband, as the dove her mate, 
Hating a sister with the hate of Cain. 

I shall not see the town of Bethlehem ; 

I fear I shall not even see the morn ; 
The blossoms fade ... I am as one of them. . . 

They fade, ere fruits be born. 

Here lies a pitcher, broken near the well. 

Whose sherds can hold the sacred fount no more ; 

Here lies an empty and an outcast shell, 
Upon life's trampled shore. 

Here let my simple monument arise. 

That travelers through all the days may scan 

The solemn and tremendous sacrifice. 
Which woman makes for man. 



8s 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



''THOU HAST GAINED THY BROTHER/' 

— Jesus Christ. 

What towering, monster ghost is yon. 

That sways amid the ocean brume, 
Far out, the shelving beach driv'n on, 

Involv'd in clouds of spume? 

One mast is there, one mast of three, 

And she lies restless, broadside on. 
Still hammered by the windward sea, 

And half the deck work gone. 

A lone man, clinging to the shrouds. 

Dim grandeur of a dying form, 
Hovering between the sea and clouds. 

Last victim of the storm. 

And who are these upon the sand 

With eyes upon the blinding sea? 
A bronz'd and weather-beaten band : 

The life-boat's company. 

There stand they, while the tempest peals. 
Girded with buoyant breast-plate stanch ; 

There stands the life-boat on its wheels ; 
But who will dare the launch? 

Where is the man whose hero-shout 

The glad obedience shall compel, 
To roll that blessed life-boat out, 

Through tempest, foam, and swell? 

Behold, he comes, swift- foot he comes, 
Down from the long dune to the beach ; 
86 



and Other Poems 



He shouts, but the storm's rolling drums 
And trumpets drown his speech. 

And O, there's one that holds him there: 
She knows her loss by sea and storm ; 

How can he scorn a mother's prayer. 
And dash aside her form? 

"Your brother John, a man of men, 
How often he went far a-sea ; 

Three years ago he went, and then 
Came never back to me." 

"Let the sea bellow, the wind screech ; 

That mast will soon be down ; 
Mother, I can't stay on the beach, 

And see that last man drown." 

The storm inspires her plea again: 
"Ah, no, ah, leave me not, my son; 

How can I be bereaved of twain? 
Remember brother John." 

"Never a wind that blows, but I 

Remember that stout sailor-brother; 

But we can't let this creature die. 
And I must go, my mother. 

"Pray for these men that pull the oars, 
For they have wives and mothers too; 

We all may reach eternal shores. 
Ere we come back to you." 

No more : a smile, a kiss of hand. 
He waves to the poor mother there ; 

So leaves her on the spray-wet sand, 
In agony of prayer. 

87 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



She leans upon her weeping- friends, 
The huddled women pray and blanch; 

His voice against the storm ascends, 
Like battle-trumpet: "Launch!'' 

And at the waving of his hand, 
And at his half-heard, kingly roar, 

Those men, with eyes now flaming grand, 
Move downward from the shore. 

Down sank the boat, and up she rose, 
Behind the snow-topt hills of foam ; 

Straight-steer'd toward the goal she goes, 
To bring that remnant home. 

And now, beside the pounding hulk, 

Dark mass, that soon will fragments be, 

The life-boat lifts her tiny bulk, 
And dances on the sea. 

Now would those men outroar the blast. 
They have the wages of their hope ; 

That clinging one forsakes the mast, 
Hand-sliding down the rope. 

Above the saved, the chieftain stands; 

Up, down the boat comes bounding on ; 
He bellows shoreward through his hands: 

"Mother, it's brother John !" 



iBg 



and Other Poems 



ALONE IN OCEAN. 

"The burden of the desert of the sea" — 
On sea or land, all works for God's decree. 

What pitchy cloud, high-rolling, shades the main. 
What dreadful altar fires the ocean-plain? 

Wouldst thou of earth the utmost horror know, 
Learn from this tale ; I learned it long ago. 
I saw the man whom God ordained to save 
Brought back to mortals from the ocean-grave. 
First, hurl'd to ocean from the wrath of fire 
With many more, he saw the last expire. 
Between the upper and the lower death, 
The flame ascending and the flood beneath, 
Back and still back, by conflagration driven, 
With flames that darkened more than lit the heaven. 
They, from the trusted deck, whereon they stood, 
Leaped from the seven- fold furnace to the flood. 
This man plunged also, with his college friend ; 
Amid what scene their earthly love must end! 
He found himself of that best friend bereft, 
For one is taken, and another left. 
Alone — the vast hulk sunk in this profound; 
Alone — no human sight, no human sound; 
Comrades of ruin, sinking one by one. 
Have left this man — tremendous fate — alone. 
Alone — no voice but of the rushing wave ; 
Alone — encompass'd by the engulfing grave. 
Immeasurably small, an atom cast 
On ocean's plain, immeasurably vast, 
O human kind, have ye forever gone, 
And left this castaway to toss alone? 
The sea-bird slides upon his curving way 

89 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



And skimming, wets the lonely face with spray 
Or deems the swimmer dead, and winging near 
Affronts the human face without a fear. 
Then shrieks, discordant with the ocean's tone ; 
A second wing-sweep leaves the man — alone. 
Poor creature-fellowship — but when 'tis flown. 
More utterly that being floats alone. 

On far sea-breadths, the vainly-laboring wave 
Tumbles and bellows, with no shore to lave. 
The lullaby of death, the ocean's moan 
Would sing to final sleep, the man, alone. 

But he, the anguish and the horror gone, 
Is filled with joy — for he is not alone. 
The awful ocean, and the depthless air 
Are filled with Presence, for his God is there. 
The innumerable laughter of the waves 
Smiles on his soul — he hath a Christ that saves. 
Calm as a summer sky with shining fleece. 
For life or death, he hath the God of Peace. 

It is for life! Lo, an ascending wave 
Like resurrection, lifts him from the grave 
Where, poised a moment on the billow's height 
He hath, like angel's wing, a sail in sight. 

What was that ship? A mote on ocean cast. 

What was the man? An atom in the vast. 
But Providence divine, with plan complete, 
Ordains to save — the mote and atom meet. 
Uplifted by the grip of tarry hands, 
'Mid shouts of gladness on the deck he stands. 

'Tis well to know, that rescued life was given 
Thenceforth, in teaching men the ways of heaven. 



90 



and Other Poems 



STABAT MATER. 

Mourning, heart-transfixed mother. 
Standing by the cross of Him 

Like whom earth beholds no other — 
See his pure eyes growing dim, 

Turn a last earth look upon thee, 

(Ere He enters into rest) 
With that gentleness that won thee, 

When he lay upon thy breast. 

Mother, what hath Jesus left thee. 
To uphold thy sinking days? 

Is it God hath thus bereft thee ? 
Dark — how dark — are all his ways I 

Mother, still his voice can ease you. 
In the heart's tremendous loss; 

Hark! it is the voice of Jesu 
Sounding from the bitter cross,^ 

In the pangs of dissolution, 
Calm as if on heaven's throne. 

He hath found a sweet solution— 
Thou shalt not be left alone. 

He hath ne'er forgot his mother. 
Mid his anguish and his shame ; 

He is dying; lo, another 

Stands beside his suffering frame. 

Human sorrow clings to human. 
And the two hearts mourn as one ; 

But the dear voice utters : ''Woman, 
I am gone — behold thy son !" 

91 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Word how sweet — but hark, another 
All as sweet, from him shall come, 

When he says: "Behold, thy mother!" 
Dear disciple, take her home." 



He to whom earth gave no shelter 
For his weary head and form. 

Left not them to face the welter 
And the fury of the storm. 

John and Mary — thus provided 
With a legacy of love — 

Son and mother — ^undivided 
Wait to join with Him above. 



92 



NATURAL MUSIC 



THE COMING OF EVENING. 

"And sweet the coming on 
Of evening mild." 

— Milton. 

Slow swing the silent balances of heaven, 
The golden sun outweighs the silver moon, 
And in the west goes down, while in the east 
The lighter orb, a dim-faced disc, ascends. 
The sun's pale double, appearing ere his death ; 
Or like the wan-faced widow, whose frighted eye 
Sees where her husband in his blood expires. 
And here and there, one bold-ey'd star peeps out 
From the night's violet curtains; as child-eyes 
Peep from behind the mother's guardian robes. 

And now becomes the western mountain range 
A Sinai, black but crown'd with cloud and fire, 
A martyr-face, turn'd black amid the flame. 

And now, the furnace-chimney's iron blast 
Reveals its sulphurous glow against the dark, 
And flames, like lions, leap forth in the night. 

And now the clock, high in the minster-tower. 
Begins to show its luminous features, like 
A face that shines more angel-bright in woe; 
A face on which Time travels his sure round. 
But leaves no footmark ; or, like Stephen's face. 
In death-shade radiant with the splendor of God, 
As if he saw it with immortal eyes. 

And now, the splendid evening Occident, 
A horizontal band of fiery gold, 
Is seen behind the ranged trunks of trees, 
Between their darkening foliage above, 
And slope of darkening mother-land below. 

95 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Heraldic blazon of the buried sun; 
Like flash of stained windows 'thwart the nave, 
Behind the ancient line of Gothic shafts; 
Or, like high pillars of the Parthenon, 
Back'd by ^gaean sea, Hellenic sky. 

And ever as the earth grows dark, in heaven 
The grand assembly of the nightly stars 
Comes at the shepherd-call of God — that God 
Who calls them all by name, nor one is lost, 
Upon the stormless pastures of the sky. 
O strange, dark, solemn, silent fields of God ; 
No fields of man are gemmed so thick with flowers, 
As ye with ever-blossoming, faithful stars; 
They make the old heavens an highway strewn with 

flowers. 
To celebrate the triumph-march of God. 

Now sleeps the mountain, in the moonlight veil'd ; 
Now sleeps the broad gulf, in the moonlight fair ; 
Now sleep the forests, for the winds are laid ; 
Now sleep the birds, and music sleeps with them. 

And he who from the mountain views the vale, 
May see it, as with silver liquid, fill'd 
With misty moonlight, to the mountain's brim. 
And he, across hush'd fields that wanders slow, 
Can hear the long breath of the couchant kine. 
In the mild darkness — like a sound of home. 

Now, busy Memory hath gone far afield, 
And like a bee, comes richly laden home, 
Triumphant with the spoil of thousand flowers. 

O Memory : yield the fragrance and the sweet. 
Which thou hast gathered from the days of bloom, 
To cheer autumnal days of withered hope. 



96 



and Other Poems 



"SUNT QUOS JUVAT." 

One joys to catch Ionian chords, how Hektor 
Stood forth at last, for IHon to die; 

And one, to learn how far the radius vector 
Will sling a planet o'er the middle sky. 

One loves to dream, beneath Hellenic azure, 
By shafts of Psestum or of Parthenon ; 

One finds a poet's or a prophet's pleasure, 
In finials of Milan or Cologne. 

One would call up the old sea-fights ^gsean, 
And thrill his spirit by the clash of oars ; 

And one would ease his pain in that Lethean 
Stream, that doth make no music on our shores. 

One loves to plunge in the abyss with Dante; 

To meet Tartarean hate, demoniac smiles; 
And one would sail the summer seas, where Zante 

Shines fairest far, of all the sister isles. 

One heart still muses on the art of Florence, 
And dreams the beauties that are lost in words; 

While one cannot forget the Norway torrents, 
That roar, and flash, and whiten to the fyords. 

One loves the master-music; the Teutonic 
Grand minnesingers smite him to the soul; 

He bathes himself within the flood harmonic, 
Whose rhythmic waves from unsail'd oceans roll. 

With Ivanhoe, how one delights to break spear 
On Norman, or on Templar, in the joust ; 

Another roams in fairy-land, with Shakespeare, 
And takes the mighty fantasies on trust. 



97 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Beneath our woods and meadows, buried ages 
Lie folded on each other, leaf on leaf, 

And when we count their slowly-printed pages, 
How thin our generations seem, how brief. 

Lo, Memory stands beside her crumbling altar. 
And, if she could, would wake a little blaze ; 

Vain is the beckoning of her hands that falter, 
To those now disappearing, golden days. 

Days sweet, because days past ; henceforth unchang- 

Like dimming script upon an arch of time, 
Oblivion love may find, but ne'er estranging. 
For truth is truth, though hid by ages' grime. 

For love is love, through geologic changes, 
Which are but spindrift on the eternal sea ; 

And love burns on, when Appalachian ranges 
Shall sink, and leave again the Atlantic free. 

Yet love behind the haze of time is dimming. 
And veils itself in solemn blue afar; 

Like serried mountains, all the horizon rimming, 
Till they by morning-red transfigured are. 

And when the twilight deepens to the gloaming, 
And mountains darken in the dying west, 

The thoughts of love, like weary pigeons homing, 
Fly homeward to a lonely, waiting breast. 

Youth's harvest past, when painful age is gleaning 
The lonely remnants on a dark'ning field, ^ 

If love be not, what can give weight and meaning 
To all the little that our earth can yield? 

98 



and Other Poems 



A DICHORDON. 

But who can awaken the sound again, 

That thrilled from the Memmon-stone? 
Can even the harper's hand regain 

The tune, when the strings are gone? 
Though th' exiled king may return to reign, 

And resume a lonelier throne, 
Yet the hero that lies in the mound of slain 

Cannot hear how the people moan. 
Lo, the minster organ's long refrain 

May thunder, or warble, or groan, 
O'er the dead v/ho for ages and ages have lain 

In their coffins grand and lone; 
But the dead are deaf, and still remain. 

No stirring of brand or bone, 
Though the pictur'd window's glory-stain 

On their marble tombs is thrown. 
Lo, the bird, having fled from the cold and rain, 

Is forever and ever flown ; 
And its sweet and brief aerial strain 

Is gone, where the winds have blown. 
The sunset-gleams on the ocean-plain. 

And its glow on the mountain-cone. 
Shall shine again, on mountain and main, 

As in ages afar they have shone ; 
And around the pole shall swing the wain, 

As it swang ere man was known; 
And the evening star shall lead the train. 

Though it seem to ascend alone; 
But the pillars that fall from the ruinM fane 

Shall lie in the desert prone ; 
And the oak, that shadowed the plough-worn swain, 

Lies north, by the whirlwind strown ; 
And the anchor that dropt from the broken chain 

Shall sleep, with the shells o'ergrown ; 

99 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



And the berg, that carries the old moraine, 
Will be lost in the summer zone. 

So the love-lit eyes, at the cottage-pane, 
Can watch no more for their own; 

And if tears on a coffin may fall like rain, 
Can they for the wrong atone? 



A MONOCHORD. 

Nor laboring hands nor praying breath 

Can halt the iron march of death; 

World heap'd on world thine eyes shall see, 

Nature expire in agony ; 

As poor untimely fruit is cast 

By trees that shake beneath the blast, 

When all the winds are free. 

Then sounding o'er the ruin'd whole, 
The voice of God shall call thy soul : 
The famous nations of the dead, 
The hands that smote, the hearts that bled; 
The dead that people land and sea, 
The great, the small, the bond, the free, 
Shall then stand up with thee. 

Unresting ocean of the soul. 
Toward what inevitable goal? 
Those shivering waters — will they break 
In sea of glass, or fiery lake, 
Or gulf of nothingness profound? 
A stream suck'd down, that disappears, 
From light of suns or lapse of years. 
Eternal night, without a sound. 
100 



and Other Poems 



All pilgrims to that purple bourne, 

Far-seen by prophet or by Norn : 

The dead cut down like grass-flowers shorn, 

The dead whom coronets adorn; 

The dead whom gold could not suborn, 

The dead whose brows were red with thorn, 

O Death, thy victory. 
The dead that challenged death with scorn, 
In battle-thunder, neigh, and horn; 
The Spartans, dead, but not foresworn, 
The dead upon the arena torn ; 
The dead who died with none to mourn, 
The alien dead, who died forlorn ; 

All these ascending, see. 
The dead who died with age outworn. 
The baby, dead before the morn ; 
The dead that hide beneath the corn, 
The dead whom saintly shrines adorn ; 
The dead that died ere Christ was born, 
The dead that die that latest morn ; 

Shall all take rank with thee. 



ON LONG ISLAND SOUND. 

Back into the night behind us 
Stretches ghostly wake of foam, 

Like that murmurous path of memory 
By which our lives have come. 

The manner's guiding lamp 

Quivers on the low shore, 
Between the darkening arch of heaven 

And ocean's darkening floor. 

lOI 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



A band of sunset purple, 
And a flaming orange band, 

Alternate cloud and clearness, 
From zenith unto strand. 

The purple darkened denser, 
The orange flame burned low, 

And the lonely sea, immenser 
Rolled, inimitable flow. 

Between that sombre ocean 
And that awful dome of sky, 

There seems none other being, 
God unseen! than Thou and I. 



CRAIG VARRA. 

I know no fairer form of summer ease 
Than calmly spying thro' Craig Varra's trees, 
Where the bay, gleaming, spreads into the seas, 
And white sails seem to beckon us away. 

Craig Varra's trees! a ramp of green, 

While here and there, the parted boughs between. 

The flashing levels of the flood are seen, 

And thro' those vistas far our thoughts may fly. 

Behold the sunset orb, a fiery urn. 

In flaming clouds and western glory burn, 

O'er which the darken'd heaven soon shall mourn. 

When falls a silence on the land and sea. 

102 



and Other Poems 



As when flushed beauty dims behind the vail, 
The burning heaven is slowly waxing pale; 
Below, the splendor from a hundred sail 
Fades, as the embers of the sunset die. 

Thy trees, Craig Varra, heavenly pointing spires, 
Lead up the eye to those ten thousand fires 
That will not burn until the sun retires ; 
The scattered beacons on creation's shore. 

The sound the wavelets and the pebbles make, 
Or that which breezes in the tree-tops wake; 
Which lullaby, O weary, wilt thou take? 
O give me both, for both are sweet to hear. 

I'd sleep among the tree-tops' sighing lone. 
And wake unwearied by its monotone. 
To hear the tide make music on the stone — 
Sooth'd by the whisper of the wind and wave. 

Art thou not happy, highly-favored guest, 
If on thine own those gracious lips are prest? 
Such welcome, words alone have ne'er exprest, 
As thou hast found within Craig Varra's halls. 



THE SPY'S PASSAGE OVER THE ALPS. 
(From Manzoni.) 

I bent me toward the north, and leaving quite 
The beaten paths, within a narrow vale, 
A vale obscure, I took my way ; but as 
My steps went onward more, so to my view 
More spacious grew the vale. Here I discerned 
103 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Flocks wandering, and shepherds' huts; here was 

The dwelling-place extreme of mortals: I went in 

Sought shepherd's hospitality, and then 

On woolly pelts I rested through the night. 

Arisen at morn, I asked the way to France, 

Of that kind herd; "Beyond those mountains 

throng'd 
Are mountains more, (said he) and others still; 
And far, O far away is France ; and road 
Is none; a thousand are those mountains, all 
Steep, bare, tremendous, uninhabited, 
Save by the spirits; and never mortal man 
O'er them hath trod" — "The paths of God are 

many. 
Far more than those of mortal," I replied; 
"And God sends me." "And God may guide thee, 

too," 
He said, then, of what bread he held in store 
So much he took as a wayfarer might 
Go laden with; and in rough sack enwrapp'd, 
Upon my shoulders laid. The guerdon then 
Of heaven I prayed for him, and took my way. 
That valley's head I reached, I climbed a pass, 
And, in God trusting, traveled it. Here none 
Was trace of man apparent ; forests only. 
Of untouch'd pines, rivers unknown, and vales 
Without a path : in silence all ; naught else 
Than mine own steps I heard, and now and then 
The roll of torrents, or the unforeseen 
Whir of the hawk or eagle, from the steep 
Nest launch'd upon the morn, with whizzing sound 
Pass o'er my head ; or, at the noon-tide hour, 
The cones of forest pines, touch'd by the sun. 
Rustled. And thus for three days traveled I ; 
And under the thick foliage, in the cliffs, 
Three nights I rested. My guide was the sun; 
104 



and Other Poems 



I rose with him, and so his journey too 

I followed, toward his setting turn'd. Unsure, 

Yet, of the road I was, from vale to vale 

Passing o'er ridges ever, or if sometimes. 

Some pass of practicable slope I saw 

Arise before me, and attained its top 

Other far loftier peaks, before, around, 

Stood far above me still; others, with snow 

From summit unto base white-glistening. 

Like steep sharp tabernacles, fix'd on ground; 

Others, of iron hardness, rear'd in guise 

Of walls unscalable. — The third sun's light 

Had failed, when a great mountain I discerned, 

Which o'er the others raised its brow, and was 

Entire one verdant slope, and to its top 

Was crowned with greenery. Toward that part 

I soon had turned my step. — It was the side. 

The orient side, of this same mountain here. 

On which, but opposite the setting sun. 

Thy camp is fixed, O king. — In mountain-folds, 

The darkness gathered me ; the dry, soft leaves, 

Of which the pines had been despoiled, and which 

Spread thick the ground, my couch; its canopy 

Most ancient trunks of trees. A smiling hope 

Awoke me at the morning light, and full 

Of vigor fresh I climbed the mountain-side. 

Scarcely its height I gained, when from afar. 

Seeming to come, a murmuring touched mine ear; 

Deep sound, with no cessation; then I stood. 

And listened motionless ; 'twas not the stream. 

Broken 'mid rocks far down ; 'twas not the wind 

Which came against the woods, and whistling passed 

From one to another, but in very truth, 

A murmur of the living, an indistinct 

Sound of the words and works and of the feet 

Trampling far off, a stirring-up immense 

105 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Of men; my heart leaped up within; my steps 
I hastened. On that peak, O king, which seems 
To us from here a long and keen-set ridge 
To cleave the sky, like to a sharpen'd axe, 
Lies a broad table-land, whose herbage thick 
Hath ne'er before been trod. O'er this I took 
What transit was most brief: each moment, still 
The sounding grew more near ; I swallowed up 
The remnant of the way; I reached the edge, 
I shot my glance far down into the vale, 
I saw, — I saw, — the tents of Israel, 
The long'd-for camp of Jacob ; prone on ground, 
I thanked my God, I blessed him, and came here. 



SUMMER DAYS. 

Oh, for the summer days ; 

With robes of gladsome green — 
When the flowers look up with wondering eyes, 
Thro' the endless deeps of the brooding skies. 

In the sungold, blue, and sheen. 

Joy for the summer days : 

With warm and fragrant breath; 
For the hills are bright and the clouds are gold. 
And the gates of life their treasures unfold; 
Unseen are the gates of death. 

Hail to the summer days : 

Children of rosy Dawn; 
With their mother's kiss in their foreheads fair, 
And their mother's gold in their shining hair, 

Tho' the mother's stars are gone. 

io6 



and Other Poems 



Grand are the summer days: 
The old earth's wordless song; 
For she sings to herself of the time to come, 
Of a king to return like a husband home. 
To make her new and strong. 

Mourn for the summer days : 
For the summer days must die ; 
And the black-rob'd blasts shall sing their hymn, 
And the leaves shall fall from the forest dim 
Like the tears from a mother's eye. 

Tears for the summer days : 

For the song and the beauty o'er; 
They are gone like the joy of an eye now dead. 
Or the gold on the wing of a bird that fled, 
Through storm — to a shadowy shore. 

Wait for the summer days : 
That will not pass away; 
Till the gates are wide to the innermost heaven. 
And the glory bursts thro' the portals riven, 
Unsetting summer day. 



BOLD ROBIN. 

Robin bold, and red of breast, 
Come, and build a-near thy nest ; 
Liveried courier of the spring, 
Let us joy to hear thee sing. 

Redbreast, are the mornings cold? 
Yet thy little heart is bold; 
While the stiffen'd fields are plowed, 
Let us hear thee call aloud. 
107 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Thou wilt see the roses soon, 
Sing to sleep the morning moon ; 
While thou waitst for cherries ripe, 
Let us hear thy gladsome pipe. 

Robin, singular wast thou; 
Hast become a plural now. 
Busy, weary, canst thou rest, 
On that crowded, noisy nest? 

Robin, Robin, that red breast 
Leans like sunset o'er the nest, 
While each little beak is spread, 
Screaming for the daily bread. 

Aye, to thee they're lovely things. 
Growing songs and growing wings; 
Robin, there will come a day 
When thy loves are fled away. 



THRICE FAIR. 

The twilight-silence loves the far-off bell; 

Yet ere this day, my day with thee, depart, 
May I not find some music-words, to tell 

Thee once for all, how beautiful thou art. 

Thou art more beautiful than flying foam. 

That decks the sea-breast with an edge of storm. 

While plunging steeds of ocean's hippodrome 
Caerulean darkness into light transform. 
io8 



and Other Poems 



More beautiful than is the shell that lies 

Where golden sands and singing waters meet; 

Whose volute, faintly blush'd with tender dyes, 
May match the rosy radiance of thy feet. 

More beautiful than is the aisle of green, 
That wins the eye into the forest deep; 

Where sunlight wanders to make shade or sheen. 
Or, like a spent child, strays and falls asleep. 

The ripening years have formed thee what thou art. 
Yet scarcely left their story on thy brow; 

Ages have drained the dripping mountain's heart. 
To form stalactites far less fair than thou. 

More beautiful than gilded cloud of even, 

Where vanish'd sun prolongs his dying gleam; 

Repeats his glory in the glooming heaven, 
Itself repeated in the silent stream. 

Those few great stars that I am watching now. 
That stand unveil'd beside the growing moon, 

Are beautiful, O Love, not more than thou; 
But O, their beauty will not dim so soon. 

Thine outward charm, the acme of a flower; 

Thine inward beauty is the starry ray; 
The one sheds bloom and fragrance on an hour; 

Beyond Orion shall the other stay. 

Can aught be fairer than the orchard- May, 

When shell-tint blossoms load the fragrant 
bough ? 
He that beholds thee cannot choose but say : 
"Yes; one is fairer, Love, and it is thou." 
109 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



The tender glory of the dawning sea, 

The birds that bring and sing the summer now, 
The spread of morning-diamonds on the lea; 

One charms us from them all; Love, it is thou. 



no 



PICTURES FROM GREEK URNS. 



MEDEA. 

I am that one that left her golden home, 
O'er Pontic and Propontic salt to roam, 
To dash through spindrift, surge, and quivering 

foam, 
Through countless ranks of waves that climb and 

comb, 

And past the gunwale race. 

Bethinks me, how through boiling wave and scum. 
Forth went the oars and back, as through the thrum 
The weaver's shuttle flies ; and I sat dumb, 
(While ringing winds in rattling cordage hum) 
And gazed on Jason's face. 

How ought I never to have left the shore. 
And dared the stinging blast and thunder-roar, 
(O golden Kolchis, shall I see thee more?) 
Of waves that toss and climb and break and pour. 
And sway the rushing keel. 

I heard them say: "Let not too far 
Go seaward down the leaning spar, 
Lest we be like the tilted car. 
On one wheel turning round the bar, 
In air one swinging wheel." 

How roared Euroklydon, to urge 
Our bows against the hissing surge ; 
How plunge the timbers and emerge, 
Like Neptune's horses at the scourge ; 
The dark-blue, solemn plunge. 

113 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Ah, memory, thy lures withhold. 
Or I shall love him as of old; 
Be firm, my will, my heart, be cold. 
Pass into darkness, days of gold, 
My soul, prepare revenge. 

And when we scraped the Dorian shores. 
The clash and thud of unshipp'd oars 
Resounded hollow ; while from scores 
Of sea-beat men the paean roars; 
Each man, — a demigod. 

Then, what a welcome to the land, 
When Jason took me by the hand. 
And lifted me across the strand, 
Nor let me print my foot on sand — 
As on a cloud I rode. 

Ah, fool, that all my witchcraft could not tell 
How Jason's whispers that I loved so well, 
Were lies ; as little knoweth he, how fell 
The drops of vengeance in my heart that dwell — 
On him and his distill. 

The salt spray on my face, how soon it dried ; 
The salt tears on my cheeks, how they abide ; 
And 'neath those tears, the fires of vengeance hide, 
Bowels of flame 'neath Etna's snowy side; 
Wake, vengeance, tears, be still. 

The hands that fastened thole to thong, 
The backs that swayed, like saplings strong. 
The rhythm of oarage and of song — 
Like moon through cloud, we swept along — 
O, my triumphant will. 

114 



and Other Poems 



Each Argonaut, sublimely brave, 
What was he but my galley-slave, 
To whirl me o'er the subject wave, 
Mistress of all that life could crave, 

And shall I crouch to doom? 

Passing the stern Symplegades, 
The sea became a hundred seas ; ^ 
What cared I, — since he found his ease 
With head upon my waiting knees, 

'Mid winds and billows' boom? 

They prate of their Eumenides, 
Of vengeful gryphons o'er yon seas. 
How Gorgon-eyes the marrow freeze; 
I am more terrible ^than these: 

I am the love that hates. 

Herbs, garner'd 'neath the rounded moon, 
The nfght-hags, with their curse and croon. 
Bestowed on me — their bridal boon : 
Ho, Jason, wilt thou taste them soon? 
Canst thou cajole the Fates? 



IPHIGENIA. 

Like thousand sheep in meadow, lay 
A thousand ships in Aulis bay ; 
A thousand masts at morning shine, 
A thousand fade at day's decline ; 
At mid-day, o'er the windless flood, 
A thousand masts like pillars stood 
Up-springing from the blue below 
Toward that far, upper blue they go. 
115 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



And when the buskin'd huntress grand 

Sped silver shafts o'er the sea and land. 

And kindled all her waxing horn, 

The torch of heaven, that burns till morn. 

Unsleeping Agamemnon's eye 

A thousand masts could yet descry; 

For, like a leafless forest, there 

They glimmered in the windless air. 

The shadow'd ships, how silently 
Reflected in the silent sea: 
So standing like a thousand isles, 
Sea-spaced between their ranks and files, 
And each sea-space, a still lagoon 
Rend'ring whole-imaged sun or moon, 
Each bulwark, ranged with shields of brass, 
Down-mirror'd as in sea of glass. 

Each glorious line of fiery shields 

Repeated in the azure fields ; 

While straight from every shield, a spear 

Upstanding, slim and tall and sheer, 

Like shaft of light, if only one. 

Ascending from the buried sun; 

A glittering point, o'er gleaming shield, 

Like star o'er moon, on heaven's field. 

But shield and spear, and mast and oar. 
Still as the rocks that wall the shore; 
Where scarce the wave can swell and fall 
Enough to streak the rock at all; 
And, gently creeping for the beach, 
The wilting sea-weed fails to reach. 
And silent is the lisping hymn 
That's murmured on the ocean's brim. 

ii6 



and Other Poems 



That sea, which men said could not rest ; 
That deep, dark, ancient, throbbing breast, 
Lies still around the pictured fleet. 
As ocean's heart had ceased to beat. 
And while that mighty breast is numb, 
That voice of countless song is dumb, 
Sweet Muses, grant me one more song. 
And turn to music this my wrong. 

Ah, Linus, thou the song canst hear, 
Song of the swan, in hundredth year. 
Sure, once I heard, in days agone. 
The music of the dying swan; 
But five such lives as mine are fain 
To pass, ere that be heard again. 
Ah, music rare as that might be 
A funeral-wail condign for me. 

Religion, doth thine ancient name 
Stand sponsor for this crime and shame? 
Do gods, or goddesses, or God, 
Demand my beauty and my blood? 
Men call me beautiful, and I, 
Who must for grander beauty die, 
All beauteousness can only hate. 
To me a dowry of dark fate. 

But wherefore not to me, in whom 
Is now fulfilled Tantalic doom? 
King's daughter on the pyre am I, 
Up-gazing into soft, sweet sky. 
How strange the earth, how strange the sea; 
How strange are all things unto me : 
The sky, a field of dappled fawns, 
Sweet pasture and sweet flock of dawn's. 
117 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



The moon — her nightly voyage o'er, 
A bright shell on a sapphire shore; 
The sun, impatient with desire 
To spread the ocean-plain with fire ; 
Bright-growing as a burnish'd shield 
That boundless, windless ocean-field. 
But every star has crept away. 
And left me to my dying day. 

I am the bride of victor Death, 
Who soon shall claim my sacred breath; 
So let them count my life by drops. 
Until the thin red fountain stops. 
This heart's an urn o'erset, from which 
Must flow libation red and rich ; 
Mine the first blood by Ilion shed, 
I lead the train of Argive dead. 

Achaian, Argive, Myrmidon, 
Remember me when I am gone 
When ye have passed the Icarian flood, 
Remember me, and this my blood ; 
'Fore Skaian gate, and Dardan wall. 
Remember, here ye saw me fall: 
By Simois' whorl, Skamander's wave. 
Remember her ye could not save. 



HER DEATH-SONG. 

O father high: 
Surrender me to die; 
For I shall blazon Agamemnon's name, 
A constellation, every age the same. 

ii8 



and Other Poems 



O mother strong, 
Avenge not this my wrong; 
For I, with death's prophetic eye, can see 
The days of darkness that will rise for thee. 

O brother sure. 

No love as mine so pure 
Shall ever be the portion of thy soul, 
Long as the chariot-days of life may roll. 

O sister sweet, 

Turn thou away thy feet ; 
Why shouldst thou, heiress of the blossoming years, 
O'erspread thy sky with this grey mist of tears? 

Pelides, thou, 

With thunder on thy brow. 
Go, bear thy vengeance to the shuddering gates, 
Where I lion from thy hand her ruin waits. 

Now must I tell 

The holy sound, Farewell, 
Farewell, Farewell, and with a virgin moan, 
I meet the threefold champion, and am gone. 



ANDROMACHE. 

Is there a radiance on my brow? 
My soul hath skill prophetic now ; 
Not Kalchas, nor the Theban seer, 
Can see the unseen things more clear. 
I see where Hector on the plain 
Rolls back the Argive host amain : 
The torch: like dark-red moon's eclipse; 
The cry : " 'Ware Hector at the ships.'' 

119 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Oh, fierce, unconquerable joy, 

Of battle 'neath the towers of Troy: 

Great chieftain, how thy puissant hand 

Whirls swift and high the fateful brand: 

Red-rushing as the hairy star, 

Thou rollest ruin from thy car ; 

Like Zeus, with thunder-bearing hand, 

Thou hurlest death on sea and land. 

I see thee, on thy path of ire. 
Rush, like Erinnys, arm'd with fire; 
Between the ship-stakes and the wall 
I hear thy deep, commanding^ call ; 
High in the rush of booming cars, 
I see thee aim against the spars ; 
The crackling, furious torch is cast 
Sublime against the tilted mast. 

I hear that spirit-thrilling crash, 
The sound of the long, quivering ash, 
Against the stakes, against the shield, 
'Gainst all that fronts thee in the field. 
O joy, to watch thy gleaming form 
Rush through the Danai like a storm. 
And tear them from their towers with ease, 
Like wind that strips the wailing trees. 

'Twas then ye loud-voiced Danai quailed ; 
Ye knew not Hektor when ye sailed. 
If ye had seen his sword alone. 
And heard the thunder of his tone. 
And with the thunder-stone that blazed 
Where'er his potent arm was raised : 
Your prayers to all the gods had yearned 
That Aulis' wind had never turned; 



120 



and Other Poems 



EOS. 

The white, tremendous, wallowing team 
Toss clouds of foam from Atlas' stream, 
And, faintly ros'd with western light, 
They march to meet the ascending night. 
For, where the chariot's path of light 
Divides that rising wall of night. 
Beyond Abyle's columns far. 
Each night renews the ancient war; 
Somewhere, upon the ebon plain. 
The primal conflict wakes again ; 
Somewhere, upon the ebon plain. 
The hero-steeds of light are slain ; 
And o'er their billowing, bellowing graves 
The tomb of darkness domes the waves. 

Nay, somewhere, in Plutonian deep. 
The steeds of glory do but sleep, 
And Eos' whisper they shall hear. 
When Phosphor's lamp is kindled clear: 
Soon, from her subterranean stall, 
They snort, and stamp her pillar'd hall. 
Their hoof-beats, in impatient halt. 
Resound like thunder in the vault. 
And through the long columnar rooms 
Are soundings as when ocean booms. 
See, where their mistress grand, alone, 
And high, ascends her chariot-throne. 
They rise flame-ey'd, like ruddy Mars, 
And ramp to charge the cloudy bars. 
Then, with reverberating neigh. 
Spring forth, as lions, at the prey. 
With joy of battle in their eyes. 
To chase the darkness from the skies ; 

121 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



With joy of battle in their breast, 
To chase the darkness, east and west. 
With thunder-march, through heaven to go, 
And seek the night, their ancient foe; 
Then, victors, find their bath again, 
Down-roHing to the purple main. 
And fling to foam the heaping seas. 
Beyond thy pillars, Hercules. 
The steeds star-fronted — hear them champ 
The steeds of dawn-glow — see them ramp: 
The glory of their nostrils pours 
Cloud-vapours, bright to Ereb shores ; 
While hoof and axle dash the spray 
On Calpe's haughty forehead gray. 

Meanwhile, and far away, the dark 

Invades Caucasian mountains stark; 

Where hovering Oceanides, 

Beyond Ionian, Pontic seas. 

Would fain Promethean woes beguile, 

With Ocean's countless song and smile 



A FRAGMENT FROM ^SCHYLUS. 
(To be read with "Eos.") 

— And where the Erythraean main 
Extends its flood, a purple plain; 
The ^Ethiopians, that teem 
With all things, by the ocean-stream ; 
The flashing lake with brazen gleam ; 
There, where the all-beholding sun 
Still drives his steeds immortal down, 
And where their weary limbs he laves, 
In warm baths of the gentle waves. 

122 



and Other Poems 



PERSEPHONE. 

The far-off, unforgotten, sun-bright hours: 
Then, from my fallen tunic, fell the flowers, 
The sunny, shining asphodels. 

mother, is the vale of Enna now 

As bright as when I roamed it, yes, and thou ; 
We bound the coronet upon my brow, 
Of gather'd golden asphodels. 

1 dream it still, that azure crystalline. 
In all the sky beyond the mountain seen. 

The sun-gold, flashing o'er the vale; 
The moaning pines, the harpers of the hills. 
The crag, o'er which the lisping stream distils, 
The urn of fire, in middle heaven, that fills 

With golden fire my Enna vale. 

Dark were the chariots, mother, dark the way. 
Swift darkness that o'er swept the golden day — 

The day that I was reft from thee; 
'Tween sun and me swift rolled a vast eclipse, 
A shade that hushed the song upon my lips ; 
And I was whirled, like leaf the tempest strips, 

Great mother, when I passed from thee. 

Great mother, I have found how much alone 
May be a heart uplifted on a throne ; 

I weep for thy remembered breast; 
Where Acheron and where Cocytus booms 
(No asphodel upon their margin blooms) 
I reign among a thousand grisly dooms ; 

Thy daughter, homeless for thy breast. 
123 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



The crown is rusting on my sombre brow. 
My starry beauty has evanished now, 

With which the vale of Enna shone ; 
My tunic where? that let the blossoms fall, 
For this great robe encumbers like a pall ; 
Might I change places with the lowliest thrall. 

To glean the fields where Enna shone. 

In these dread courts, forgotten by the sun. 
Where all things glimmer purple, drear, and dun, 

No herald star presages morn ; 
And these swart dimly-cipher'd columns here. 
More ghastly than the shivering tree-trunks sere. 
That leafless stand through long night o' the year. 

But whisper of a vernal morn. 

If thou shouldst find me, wouldst thou know me 

now? 
Imperial gloom was alien from my brow. 

When I was sweet Persephone; 
This purple hair flew golden as the corn 
On -Etna's flank : these dark, dark eyes forlorn. 
Blue as the wave from which was beauty born — 

Now I am grand Persephone. 

Ah, mother ; better to be sweet than grand, 
And better to be loved than to command ; 

Thy bosom than the purple throne. 
O love and beauty lost: O dying gleam 
Of sunset-splendor on the vivid stream, 
That fell through darkness to the land of dream. 

To flow by death's immortal throne. 

Where was that vale wherein I used to dwell ; 
That vale of wings, songs, sun, and asphodel, 

124 



and Other Poems 



Where was that fragrant and that golden 
vale? 
There, where a weary, golden head could rest, 
Upon a mother's deep and waiting breast, 
And hear the glad wind singing from the west, 

To MixidJs mountain, Enna's vale. 

Where was that hill I loved with thee to climb? 
Thy tone was music and thy words were rhyme. 

We turned our fresh eyes to the morn; 
And ere the sun, there breathed to thee and me, 
Never again, alas, to breathe on me. 
Sweet breathings of the pure and amarant sea. 

With rays from rosy-vested morn. 



SHIELD-BEARING— SHIELD-BORNE. 

Still at last the bristling field. 
Westward has the sun-car wheeled; 
Bear him homeward on his shield. 
Hide not scar on cheek and brow — 
Youthful beauty counts not now. 

He hath broke the grim phalanx, 
Thunderbolt that smote the ranks ; 
Now where dead are heaped in banks, 
Ye shall find him, marred, but fair — 
Let the shield its bearer bear. 

Hammering sword and anvil mail, 
Chaff of men and War his flail. 
Storm of death with arrowy hail — 
These to him have left the field, 
Bear him homeward on his shield. 

125 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Ah, no Tearless Victory this ! 
She, who many a year shall miss 
Her bright hero's quickening kiss — 
Death hath oped a fount of tears 
In her soul, to flow for years. 

Metal splendor he had on, 
Fiery helm, habergeon; 
Now the inner Splendor's gone. 
Lay the sword he ne'er may wield 
O'er his body on the shield. 

Head hung back, beyond the rim, 
Balanced by o'erhanging limb, 
Gently, grandly, bear ye him ! 
Hark! the distant trumpets pealed! 
March like angels from the field. 

Rhesus of the shining car. 
Great Sarpedon, borne afar, 
Memnon, child of morning-star — 
Hail your comrade of the field. 
Sacred burden of the shield. 



THE FLASH OF THE FALL OF TROY. 

(From the "Agamemnon" of ^schylus.) 

'Twas that relay of telegraphic flame 

Which flashed the fall of Troy across the deep: 
From Ida's height the blazing signal came. 
Kindling on Lemnos at a flying leap ; 
Thence on to Athos' promontory steep 
Till o'er the sea-wave gleamed the crackling pine, 

126 



and Other Poems 



And cheered Makistos' guards, who dared not 
sleep ; 
Far forth again, o'er Euripus' dark brine. 
And to Messapios' heights, stretched on the fiery 
line. 

Messapios' watchmen lit their heathery pile, 

Which, moon-like, past Asopos' valley shone ; 
Kithairon's summit, distant many a mile. 

Next caught the herald-flame that hurried on; 

Nor yet the flying fire its goal had won, 
But restless, sprang across Gorgopis' flood, 

To where, on Aigiplanktos' summit lone. 
With ready brands the faithful watchmen stood 
Alert, to speed the tale of Troy extinct in blood. 

The peak that overlooks Saronic gulf 
Next kindles with its monumental pyre 

Whose sudden blaze alarms the midnight wolf, 

Prowling the mountain- woods ; and still the fire 
Pursues its airy track, and will not tire ; 

To Arachnaios' height it darts aloof, 

Telling with tongue of flame its message dire. 

And she who ten slow years had sought that proof, 

Saw its red letters die, from Agamemnon's roof. 



FIRST CHORUS OF THE AGAMEMNON OF 

^SCHYLUS. 

Chanted by a Band of Aged Men. 

The years to their decade have come, 
Since Priam's mighty doom. 
The kingly brothers, yok'd as one, 
(From Jove their double staff and throne) 
127 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Menelaos with his brother's aid, 
In thousand Argive ships array'd, 

From this our coast 

Led up their martial host. 
''Great Mars," their eager spirits roar; 
Like the shriek of eagles, which, far o'er 
In wandering grief for brood distrest. 

Whirling in rings, 
And mov'd with oarage of their wings, 

Bemoan the nest, 
The lost brood, and the couch they pressed. 
And some Apollo, listening high 
(Or Pan or Zeus) to the shrill bird-cry, 
Wail of these aliens of the sky, 

Doth send, tho' late, 
On their despoilers, furious fate. 

The sons of Atreus thus our lord 
Zeus, the defender of the board, 
To Alexander sends, in strife 
For her, the polyandrous wife. 
He many grapplings and sore stress 
Of laboring knees in dust that press. 
With shards of many a shiver'd lance, 
Will bring on Danaoi's first advance ; 

On Trojan hosts no less. 
And such as this, our present state, 
And thus accomplished is our fate. 
Nor pouring tears shall e'er assuage, 
Nor pouring wine, the fiery rage. 

We, honorless in age outworn, 
Of that great armament forlorn. 
In child-like feebleness abide, 
And on our staves our footsteps guide. 
Young marrow, moving in the breast, 
128 



and Other Poems 



Is but as age, at best, 
While Mars, for them, is far abroad; 
So he that's over-old, whose head 
Already hath its foliage shed. 
Walks on his triple-footed road, 
And wanders on his childish way, 
A dream appearing in the day. 

Tyndareus' daughter, thou ; 

Queen Clytemnestra now : 

What news? what hast thou heard? 

By what reported word 
Dost thou send sacrifices round 
For all the gods that guard our ground? 
The gods below, the gods on high, 
Gods of the market and the sky. 

With gifts their altars blaze. 
One here, one there, to reach the sky, 

The torch uplifts its rays; 
Full-fed with the anointment clear. 
The gentle, genuine good cheer. 
The royal oil-cake, brought out here. 
Of these things, O that thou wouldst tell 
What's right, and possible as well; 
Become a healer of this care. 
Which sometimes verges to despair; 
Bright hope, from sacrifices born. 
Sometimes fends off the thought forlorn, 
The grief that hath the spirit worn. 

Lo, I the fateful might can say. 
Of heroes, god-sped on their way; 
For yet my life the god prolongs. 
And breathes persuasion on my songs : 
That winged omen doth command 
Young Hellas 'gainst the Teukrid land, 
129 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



With spear and with avenging hand; 
The Achaeans might, of double throne, 
Twin chieftains, but whose thoughts are one 
Bird-kings, one dark, one white in rear, 
Unto the kings of ships appear 
O'er housetops, on spear-shaking hand, 
In seats conspicuously grand. 
Feasting on hare enlarged with young — 
In her last race she met the wrong. 
Ah, Linus, and. Ah, Linus, wail; 
But let the right prevail: 

The army-prophet, wise of heart, 
Saw the bold Atrids stand apart; 
He knew what meant the slaughter'd hare, 
A convoy to the leaders there; 

And thus divining spake: 
*'This march shall Priam's city take, 
At length ; but not till Doom shall spoil 
The tower'd wealth of people's toil. 
May no grudge from the gods disturb 
The great, fore-hammer'd army-curb: 
Chaste Artemis doth hold in ire 
This house, and wing'd hounds of her sire, 
Who, with her offspring, slew the hare. 
The woful creature, ere she bare — 
The goddess hates the eagles' fare. 
Ah, Linus, and, Ah, Linus, wail; 

But let the right prevail : 

With kindly eyes doth Jove's fair maid 

Regard the whelps of lions dread; 

And all the young of every beast 

That haunts the wild and loves the breast; 

Of these it is her will 
Jhe gladsome omens to fulfil — 
130 



and Other Poems 



Omens, some good — some blamed for ill. 

And now to Paian mine appeal 

I make — who hath the power to heal: 

Lest she some baffling winds should raise, 
To hold the ships in long delays ; 
An off'ring lawless, strange she speeds. 
Which hath no feast, but quarrels breeds, 

And alienated wife: 
For, dread recurrent vengeance bides, 
Dark, mindful, in the house that hides, 

Wrath for a daughter's life." 
Such fates (with great goods) Kalehas cried, 
Must royal palaces betide; 

Foretold by birds on wing: 

With these harmonious sing: 

*'Ah, Linus, and, Ah, Linus, wail, 

And may the right prevail." 

Zeus, whosoe'er he be, 

If this name grateful be, 

Such be his name from me; 

I have no skill to guess 

Measuring the more and less, 
But Zeus, if I in truth would roll 
This helpless burden from my soul. 
Not he that in old times was great, 
With bold, all-daring force elate, 
Can now suffice, — his day is done; 
And who thereafter came, that one 
Hath met his conqueror, and is gone. 

Who clangs to Zeus the song with zeal, 
As victor shall have all his will. 
Zeus guided men in wisdom's path. 
Ordained the law that knowledge hath 

Its way in sorrow still. 

131 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Before the heart distil in sleep 
The drops of pain, in memory deep ; 
They learned, who had thereto no will. 
From gods such favor well might seem, 
Who hold, by power, the seat supreme. 

Grave admiral of Achaian ships 
(No blame for prophet on his lips) 
Consenting to the forceful fates, 
What time the Achaian folk bewails 
Its wasted stores and idle sails. 
Beyond the bay of Chalkis waits 
In Aulis' counter-current straits. 

Then, then from Strymon rush the gales ; 
While speed, with food and anchorage, fails, 
Men, ships and cordage fail in strength, 
And time is stretched to double length. 
And fades and falls the Argive flower — 

But when the seer forecast 

(By Artemis her power) 

To stay the bitter blast, 

A plan to bring relief 

More bitter to the chief: 

Th' Atrides then were fain 
To smite their staves upon the ground, 

Nor could the tear restrain. 
The aged monarch's words resound: 

'Tf I shall not obey, 

How heavy is my doom : 

And heavy, if my child I slay. 
The splendor of my home; 
My father-hands at th' altar stain, ^ 
With streaming blood of virgin slain. 
And which of these is void of woe? 

132 



and Other Poems 



How shall I, a deserter, go, 

And from the alliance fail ? 
The sacrifice that stays the storm, 
The flowing blood from virgin-form, 
Tis right to seek with passion warm: 

So may the right prevail." 

When he put on the yoke of fate. 
Breathed from his soul an impious change, 

Impure, contaminate, 
Then turned his thought to daring strange. 
For, wretched, mad, ill thoughts embolden 
Mortals— source of sorrows olden. 
He dared to sacrifice his daughter 
In aid of wife-avenging slaughter, 

An offering for the fleet — 
And all her prayers, and father-cries, 

And virgin-age so sweet. 

The warrior-chiefs despise. 

Then spake the father, after prayer. 
That o'er the altar, kid-like, there. 
They lift her high and hold her prone, 
With all her garments round her thrown, 
And guard her mouth and beauteous face. 
From uttering doom upon her race. 

She, gagged by force from uttering sound, 
While saffron garments swept the ground, 
Smote all her executioners 
With that heart-melting glance of hers, 
And as in picture clear, but weak 
She now can only long to speak. 
Once father's festal halls among. 
She sang, with pure and virgin song; 
And in dear song did celebrate 
Her father's trebly-joyful fate. 

133 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



What next was, I nor saw nor say — 
But Kalchas' arts have had their way. 
And Justice moveth on in sorrow 
To learn what shall be on the morrow 
Since no deliverance we know, 
With farewell presage let it go, 
As equal with a foretold woe. 

O come, clear-rising with the beams of dawn 
Prosperity — when these are gone — 
This we desire — we, next at hand, 
Sole rampart of the Apian land. 



134 



HORTUS MORTIS 



IN THE GARDEN, A TOMB. 

Love, kingly love, hath he with us 

upheld so transient state: 
And coldly lies, a murder'd king, 

dethron'd, discoronate ? 
And where is now the radiance, 

and where is now the song, 
That made the June sky brighter, 

and that made the old earth young ? 

Her voice that said, My love. My one, 

and moved thee to the soul, 
Poor heart, no voice that's heard on earth 

remains to make thee whole. 
Her eyes that sought thy face and smile, 

full-orb'd attendant lights, 
Have waned, to shine for thee no more, 

and thou, ah, moonless nights; 

The bird that came from isles afar, 

with thee alone to rest. 
Hath leaned her brow upon a thorn, 

in leaning on thy breast; 
The bird that came from lands afar, 

for thee alone to sing. 
Lay fluttering, a broken heart, 

beneath a broken wing. 

In ruinous anger, lo, thou threwst 

a pearly love away; 
That bitter memory ruminate, 

through Life's December day. 

137 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Lo, anger's fiery beams thy Love's 
Icarian wings consumed, 

Slow-fluttering, surely down, in gulf 

that ne'er repents, entombed. 

She had a woman's sacred pride, 

maybe she was to blame. 
But her heart made song ^olian, 

at mention of thy name; 
Because the summer's lightning-flash 

a moment hurt thine eyes, 
Wilt thou forget the long, sweet peace 

of gentle summer skies? 

The royal gem of old, queen's own, 

dissolved in fiery wine: 
Her ruby heart of love, O man, 

was melted into thine. 
The goblet now is shattered, oh, 

and who can find the gem ; 
Or who can gather fragrance back 

upon the wither'd stem? 

The beauty of the pastures, see, 

to smoke consumed away; 
The yester-bloom and fragrance now 

are furnace-crackHng hay; 
Then let the wither'd bunch of flowers 

be trampled deep in mire; 
Black ashes on the hearth attest 

an unrekindled fire. 

Seek not the songful fledgelings 

in nests of the wither'd year. 

Seek not the blooms of May-tide 
in lonely forest sere. 

138 



and Other Poems 



Seek not to stay the wheels of that 

inexorable hearse, 
Seek not to right the fuming torch, 

which doom doth once reverse. 

Do not men let the broken sword 

in long dishonor rust ? 
Do not they let the porcelain sherds 

lie gathering heedless dust? 
For if the sword be cast away, 

well may the scabbard rust; 
And if the love be turned to death, 

well may the heart to dust. 

The broken heart, a broken vase, 

can ne'er be whole again; 
Your mending is but botch-work, 

'tis a dismal zig-zag stain. 
Love hath no palingenesis, 

forbear the piteous quest; 
A frozen hand may warm again, 

but not a frozen breast. 

Thou hast unloosed the winds of death 

upon a smiling main ; 
Back to the isle ^olian? 

no welcome there again. 
Canst thou make bees to murmur 

upon the Arctic snow? 
Canst thou repeat upon the clouds 

the yester-evening glow? 

Recall the sunset; yea, turn back 

God's grand kaleidoscope; 

Repaint the dimming splendor, on 

the cold far mountain-slope. 

139 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



The glories of the east and west 

are ne'er relumed in heaven, 

New ev'ry morning are His clouds, 
and fresh at ev'ry even. 

The meteor-spear that, silent, 

along the zodiac shot, 
Go, hurl it backward o'er the signs, 

in light that faileth not. 
Four thousand years of silences 

have hushed the Memnon-string: 
Go stir the granite stillness there, 

go, whisper to the king. 

Put ear to stone, and listen, now; 

the twang, so small and shrill, 
That wise men came from far to hear, 

canst thou restore the thrill? 
The light that rayed from Pharos-tower, 

an hundred fathoms high. 
Will not again bedim the stars 

hung in Canopus' sky. 

If love were but the tender down 

upon the gold-fly's wings, 
If love were but the trilling note 

the small, lone wood-bird sings; 
Yet when that down is rudely reft, 

and when that song is o'er, 
Hast thou the strength, the wisdom thou, 

such ruin to restore? 

Thou'st heard of him that perished 
in the Alpine slide of snow : 

The glacier yielded up his form, 
from that cold long-ago; 
140 



and Other Poems 



And she, the trembling, grey-hair'd one, 
with widow'd vision dim, 

Through frozen years had waited 

for this foretold look at him. 

And he was young and fair, through all 

the years of death unchanged ; 
And she, from bloom to withering, 

through all the years had ranged. 
In tears of mother-tenderness 

that aged heart must run, 
For (like that Theban woe) the bridegroom 

seemed to be the son. 

Stir not the fount of tears again — 

more bitterly it flows; 
Dircaean fount it is, new pains 

are mingled with old woes. 
When in the heart's deep lake Despair 

its threaten'd rock has thrown, 
The winds may stir the waters, but 

they cannot raise the stone. 

And if thou couldst regain thy love, 

and like Althaea's brand. 
Though marr'd, yet treasure it again; 

would not thy raging hand, 
Again Althaea's like, hurl back 

the brand in steadfast fire, 
No more to be reprieved, till love, 

till tortur'd love expire. 

Alas, the vaster barriers 

between thy love and thee, 
Than ranks of shadowy mountains, or 

than leagues of sundering sea ; 

141 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Alas, the dismal courage of 

the self-tormenting soul, 

That knew the healing fount of love, 

and would not be made whole. 

Of all deep things on earth, the heart, 

the grave ; these are most deep ; 
Not saturate by all the tears 

our best-belov'd can weep. 
Of all deep graves of earth and soul, 

this, sure, is most profound. 
Where buried love is dumb and deaf, 

as 'neath the lonely mound. 

Thinkst thou there is ordained for thee 

one yet tremendous hour, 
When that sweet past will rise again, 

in all its primal power; 
Shall rise, and shine, and seem to live, 

and breathe its sacred breath. 
But for a mxoment, then go down 

as to the second death. 

The face, long-lost, long-sought, in crowds 
that for a moment gleamed; 

One vivid moment, then was gulfed 

in throngs that onward streamed 

The patient dog that knew his lord 

at last come home from Troy, 

Twas twenty years of sorrow, and 
one fatal glint of joy. 

O sweetness that will break the heart, 
when all that love, at last 

Will shine, a moment cognizant, 
and be forever past; 
142 



and Other Poems 



The long, drear day of cloud is done, 
the sun reveals his fire 

A moment, ere that holy flame 
beyond the hills expire. 



FOR EVER. 

The bloom and the fragrance of yesterday's blossom 
Ye may have — but ye never shall hold ; 

Though the rose was at home on the loveliest bosom 
Now the rose and the bosom are cold. 

They came and they saw and they loved; they are 
gone, 

They are driven asunder for aye ; 
And a death-smitten love each is watching alone, 

By an altar whose ashes are gray. 

They have met, they have loved, they have parted 
forever ; 

And, as each goeth onward alone, 
Name of each by the other is said with a shiver, 

With a shiver that ends in a moan. 

They have met, they have loved, they have parted 
forever ; 

As the walls of a house rive asunder, 
As they fall to the south, to the north, with a quiver, 

And the red bolt descends with the thunder. 

They have met, and their love is asunder forever, 
And all that's between is a tomb — 

What tears can avail, or what palsied endeavor, 
To reverse the oracular doom? 

143 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



They have met, they have loved, they have parted 
forever, 

And the heart is a vessel so frail, 
A single rash hand all its beauty may shiver — 

To restore it — ah, who shall avail? 

See the range that is rent by convulsion of old. 
And the ocean is roaring between; 

Shall ever the strata go back to their hold. 
And the ocean go back from the scene ? 

They have met, they have loved, they have parted 
forever. 
And no cycle of years can restore ; 
Like the waves that have flowed by the rock in the 
river. 
And shall flow by the rock never more. 

They have met, they have loved, they have parted 
forever. 

Moving farther and farther away; 
Till the souls that were given go back to the Giver, 

And forever and ever and aye 1 



THE LOST STAR. 

Once on a time — a time now pass'd afar — 

A lake was lighted by a golden star, 

Which every evening climbed the mountain-bar, 

And paced the violet meadows of the night, 
And gazed into the lake from heaven's height; 
Then the lake shone, and trembled in her light. 

144 



and Other Poems 



And as the people hail their king, come home, 

He hailed her presence in the purple dome, 

By lifting countless wavelets, crown'd with foam. 

She from her vantage in the midnight skies. 
Beams on the lake, and in his deep, dark eyes 
Her fair, recurrent image nightly lies. 

As Life descended to the lowest grave, 

Her light descended to his deepest wave, 

And pierced his gloom with power to bless and save. 

So the deep lake forgot his ancient gloom, 

As risen life forgets the vacant tomb; 

Bright lake, sweet star; but now — the final doom. 

A deeper darkness than he knew before, 
Unrest more wild than that which once he bore; 
The star was lost ; came not ; could shine no more. 

So lies the lake, o'ershadow'd and alone, 
Joining his waters in an endless moan. 
Because the star has left her nightly throne. 

His dark, broad bosom heaves and trembles sore, 
And thus his wavelets weep along the shore: 
*'My light, my one dear light, will shine no more." 

No more her glory climbs the mountain-rim. 
To bless and burnish all his waters dim; 
Those waters now intone her funeral hymn. 

Lost, lost, for aye, behind the mountain-bar, 
A glory gone where many glories are; 
Alas, thus life and love are sundered far; 
Alas, the lonely lake and vanish'd star. 

145 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



THE TWO MEMNONS. 

Silent, upon his changeless throne, 
Through dusty ages sits alone 
Memnon, the lord of that sweet tone 

Which, ages since, as poets dream, 
Sounded to greet the sun's first beam, 
Slanting across the sacred stream. 

A melody that filled the air, 
And floated o'er the desert bare, 
Pure as an angel's voice at prayer. 

A song of such celestial mirth 

As was not chanted, since the earth 

Heard morning-stars salute her birth. 

For not the Sirens' witching strain. 
That swept the sea, with string'd refrain, 
And stole the seaman's heart and brain. 

Had music sweet as that which rolled 
And rang from Memnon's bosom cold, 
When sunrise washed his limbs with gold. 

The sound, the sound that floated o'er 
The Mizraim sand, the Nilus shore, 
That sacred song — is heard no more. 

Memnonian music — silent now; 
Though Eos' glory gild his brow. 
Whose splendors all the earth endow. 

As mothers listen, through their tears, 
To hear a voice, unheard for years. 
So waits the sunlight, when it nears 
146 



and Other Poems 



The throne of this mysterious king, 
To hear a song he will not sing — 
A music never more to ring. 

O, silent statue : calm as fate, 

Who breathest neither love nor hate, 

Within my heart I find thy mate. 

Thron'd in the soul's most shadowy cells, 
'Tis there another Memnon dwells. 
Nor will he answer potent spells. 

Dumb reigns he there, more dumb than stone; 
Yet long ago, a light that shone 
Through all my soul, a glory gone. 

Invested him with radiance dear. 
And from him swelled an anthem clear 
As that which heavenly harpers hear. 

Ah, melody of mouldered tongues, 
For which the hopeless spirit longs 
Ah, sweetness of forgotten songs, 
The music that to death belongs. 



THE CHAMBERED PYRAMID. 

Still chants the Nile his funeral hymn, 
For those who walked the river's brim, 
In ages cold, lone, old and dim. 

Still the south wind, on murmurous wings 
Monotonous, the requiem sings 
For twenty dynasties of kings. 

147 



The Battle of Gettysburg 

I stood between the golden Nile, 
And that bereaved and barren pile, 
That lifts its wedge — a rocky isle, 

A stony mountain reared with hands, 
Begirt with surge of rippling sands. 
Worn by the dust of Libyan lands. 

Voiceless, I watched the mass of stone, 
That stood so vast and seemed so lone, 
A monarch's tomb, a history's throne. 

A thought through all my being ran. 
And lit, like fire, the spirit wan : 
*'How like a Pyramid is man." 

Around Kephrenes' mountain-grave 
Recurrent storms of battle rave. 
King, Caesar, sultan, knight and slave. 

Yet sharp, the pyramid uprears 
Its lines above the tide of spears, 
Unworn by times, unwet by tears. 

So with the man pyramidal ; 
Though round him stars in ruin fall, 
Hope's Iris-arch transcends them all. 

From out the sable depths divine 
Of planet, constellation, sign, 
And nebula, — the old fires shine. 

Around the pyramidic pole : 
And thus, around the human soul, 
Mysterious planets flash and roll; 
148 



and Other Poems 



Immortal suns and systems glow, 
Lights flash from worlds above, below, 
On souls that come, and souls that go. 

Within the pyramid's secret room. 

Secure from battle and simoom, 

The cere-cloth'd Pharaohs lay in gloom. 

And so, in every earth-born breast, 
A thousand hopes, in mourning drest. 
Have found successive, hopeless rest. 

Embalm'd but not the less entomb'd; 
Sometimes by Memory's hand perfumed, 
Sometimes by Glory's gilt and plumed, 
Sometimes by wild Despair exhumed, 
But ne'er with light of life illumed. 



TIME THE ICONOCLAST. 

Remember thee? And thou wast beautiful; 

But that, O that was forty years ago; 
As I remember when the last moon, full. 

Made creamy silver every ridge of snow. 

I mind the blossom-lips that could beguile 

With bright girl-innocence, the summer hours; 

I mind me of the sweet, alluring smile. 

That played there, as the bee on passion-flowers. 

Ah, beauty, sweetness, love, how they compel 
The eye when present, memory when past: 

Is it so long since I bade thee farewell. 
And all that sweetness vanished in the vast? 
149 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



I watch not all the changes of the moon, 
I know not the precession of the sun ; 

But I know he will climb the heights of noon, 
And she will silver-veil the mountains dun. 

Some things are gone, and may to us return, 
And these may haunt us with a hopeful pain. 

Some things are gone — like ashes to the urn, 
Doom'd not on earth to live and love again. 

For thou hast found the dismal heritage 

With which the world doth all the wise endow; 

And suffered from the shut, volcanic rage 

That grinds the heart, and bends the back and 
brow. 

Imperial purple robes the distant crag, 

And evening rims that purple with its gold — 

The daylight climber finds but weary slag, 
And wither'd forest, thunder-smit of old. 

The whirling atoms man may drive or change, 
But never one of these may he destroy ; 

In varied forms the universe they range, 
To one brain sorrow, to another joy. 

No atom perishes — ^but beauty dies; 

And thy lost beauty, now annihilate, 
Never again, in any world, can rise. 

Nor shine, at any astronomic date. 

Time, Time wears down the granite pyramid, 
The lordly nation sinks into a slave ; 

Death presses down the brazen coffin-lid. 
And leaves autumnal rattle on the grave. 

150 



and Other Poems 



How, then, should human beauty challenge Time ? 

How shall the bloom abide upon the flowers? 
Has Phidias or Raphael 'scaped the grime? 

Not all thy loveliness could balk the Hours. 

I saw thee last, in those enchanted years. 
Thy golden beauty in the fields alone; 

I find thee now, with eyes that have no tears. 
Sad, hard Persephone, upon a throne. 



VALE— VALE— VALE. 

How chills my heart beneath the snows 

That fall upon thy tomb; 
And vain for me the graveyard rose 

Expends its honeyed bloom; 
No star in God's horizon glows, 

Can light the loveless gloom. 

Farewell, farewell, my love, my love, 
A thousand times — Farewell! 

My blinded heart must onward move. 
And stumble toward thy cell — 

This life, debarred from thee, shall prove 
A shattered, songless shell. 

Ye stars that o'er the wrecks of earth 

Far-seeing vigil keep, 
Beholding chance, time, love, war, birth, 

Death, labor, longing, sleep — 
Say, are the angels moved to mirth, 

Or do the angels weep? 

151 



MINOR CHORDS 



THE WORLD-PAIN. 

"Numberless ages ran, 

Of old, or ever thou didst reach the dawn, 
And ages numberless, in death withdrawn. 
Are waiting for thee, man." 

— From Leonidas of Tarentum, Prof. Phillimore's 
translation. 

To thine unfathomable eyes, 

What means that fleeting form, 
Hovering between the abyss and skies, 

The man — the thing — the worm. 

Maternal anguish yields its breath 

That man may live and be; 
The coral millions sink beneath. 

That palms may crown the sea. 

Ages, foreshorten'd to a span, 

Have writ, on shores and seas. 
The brief biography of man. 

Between the eternities. 

The stars that diadem the throne, 

Sang, when the world began ; 
Would they have sung, if they had known 

The deep, dark heart of man? 

Who counts the rain-drops of the earth. 

May count her mist of tears ; 
He hears the heart-beats, who hath heard 

The chiming of the spheres. 

The 'bubbling groan' of those submerged 

May find an echo far, 
With all the fiery lines converged, 

From each unspoken star. 

155 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



For, like the long-transmitted wave, 
O'er myriad miles of foam, 

The pain that vibrates in the slave 
To God himself must come. 

O still Spectator of the earth, 

And her dull tragedy, 
The while she travails with the birth 

Of that new world to be: 

The mystery of the laboring earth 

Isaiah's heart hath worn: 
"The children come unto the birth, 

Without strength to be bom." 

To thee the whole creation groans. 

Its ancient curse to tell ; 
Canst thou endure the ceaseless groans, 

Of sin, and death, and hell? 

The vastness of the universe, 

Its silence, cold and drear. 
Weigh on the heart, a formless curse, 

Out of the ancient Fear. 

What curse Memnonian from eld. 
Hath silenced Music's tone? 

What Gorgon-doom hath man beheld, 
That turns his love to stone? 

What bell, along the dismal path. 

At every crossway, tolls? 
What dark Attainder, like a wraith. 

Must dog the track of souls ? 

iS6 



and Other Poems 



Ye search the deep, ye search the skies, 

Ye search primeval years, 
And still the old worn man-heart cries. 

And breaks, for want of tears. 



THE VALLEY. 

Is there a valley that lieth alone, 

And away from the millions of men; 

Beyond the mountain's desolate cone 
And beyond the robber's den? 

I did not say that this valley was green, 
Or that men would call it fair; 

[But it makes us think of a world unseen. 
And the shadow of peace is there. 

Not shining its sides ; they are dim and dun. 
And it hath no glimpse of the sea; 

Nor glad procession of waters that run, 
By day and by dark, with melody. 

But down in its hollow there lieth a lake, 
Scarce knowing the sun's face old ; 

Dark beasts and songless birds go slake 
Their thirst in its waters cold. 

The trees are tall, and dark, and grand, 
They are green the wide year through; 

Around the lake like pillars they stand, 
But the flowers are none, or few. 

157 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



On the east shore stand the ranks of sedge, 

And bend to the quiet wave ; 
And the diff springs sheer from the western 
edge, 

Like the stone from a lonely grave. 

Behold the place where the rock-dews drip, 

Like tears from the long ago; 
Adown the crag's old face they slip, 

To be lost in the flood below. 

The strange, still forest an avenue hath. 

That leads to its column-cell; 
But alas, who walks on that sombre path, 

There is none so wise to tell. 

This is the valley beyond the slope. 

With a cold beam in the air, 
And the trine farewell of a parting hope 

Is the only voice that is there. 



SUCCESSION. 

The stork, the swallow, and the swan, 

Those pilgrims of the sky, 
Know when the winter, dim and wan, 

Faints at the south wind's sigh. 

They know Hyperion's northward march. 

O'er sea and continent; 
Who week by week, a grander arch 

Builds on the firmament. 

158 



and Other Poems 



More numerous the winged hours 

Attend the sun by day; 
And as the birds move northward, flowers 

Spring up behind their way. 

So hath it been, ere Egypt's kings, 

In periods old and lone, 
Nor once hath failed the flight of wings 

To seek the sunward zone. 

Go, like the man of Patmos, stand. 

By spindrift fierce and spray. 
And watch the surf invade the land, 

Again, again, alway. 

The bastions of the Saguenay 

Gloom'd in the stream below. 
Their image bides, the floods away, 

For ever silent, flow. 

What spring-time, since the dawn of earth. 

Hath failed the hills to preen. 
And led the mountain-dance of mirth, 

In robes of changeful green? 

And never one October came 

To hillsides of the north. 
But maples blushed in farewell flame, 

To speed the summer forth. 

The leaves, in April's glory born, 

Must in November die ; 
The rains must weep, the winds must mourn, 

That pass the gaunt woods by. 

159 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



And those who come are those who go, 

And none may come again ; 
Systole and diastole, ebb and flow, 

The rhythm and the refrain. 

A moment in the Infinite, 

A point within the Vast; 
Removed by what unmeasured flight 

From future and from past ? 



REPRESSION. 

The bud that hath never full blossomed; 

The face that was never caressed; 
The love, like a dark lake, embosomed 

In a soul that was never expressed: 

When the seal of the heart is unbroken, 
And its music hath never been sung, 

No voice from its deep hath been spoken, 
In a myriad words of the tongue. 

O Sphinx, hadst thou e'er an enigma 

So sorely our wonder to move. 
As the pilgrim that carried the stigma 

Of hate, and was found dead of love? 

The sob and the pant for expression 
Never won to the beautiful hour; 

Were choked by the grip of repression. 
Like the princelings that died in the tower. 
i6o 



and Other Poems 



As the highlander, sick in the lowland, 
Sighs out to the mountains his breath, — 

As the Paladin blast of a Roland, 
That could utter itself but in death. 

O the spirits whose silence is tragic; 

Too sunk in their sorrow to weep; 
As the palmy isles, lonely, pelagic, 

Are whelmed by a heave of the deep. 

Did ye know of the music that slumbered 
For an age in the breast of the swan ; 

How it woke into song unencumbered, 
When his glorious wing-sweep was gone ? 

And then, as the weak pinion fluttered, 
He sank on the waters of rest, 

And, pouring his life out, he uttered 
The song he had kept in his breast. 

When the urns of Manasseh were broken, 
The torches of Israel could shine. 

Whose sudden outflash was the token. 
How near was the triumph divine. 



MEMORY FAITHFUL TO SORROW. 

Shall this heart from its woe be parted never. 
As mountains changeless shade the flowing river; 
The soul to mournful memory be wed, 
As once was chained the living to the dead ? 
i6i 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



O wizard memory, let thy wand recall 
The shade of years, as Samuel rose to Saul ; 
Or, yet more potent than Mercurial wand. 
Evoke the pale, phantasmagorial band 

Before the mind's dilated eye to march. 
Like constellations o'er the ebon arch; 
When night doth quench the sun, and occupy 
With primal dark, the temple of the sky. 

My ship, with silver sails and golden sides. 
That drifted down the pearly-shining tides — 
With inward eyes I saw that blessed ship 
Like gleaming cloud in grey horizon dip. 

And now, a lucent trembling of the sea 

Is all my parted ship has left to me ; 

Till night rolls darkness o'er the shuddering main, 

And other darkness folds my heart again. 

Bright faces, waving hands, that thronged the deck. 
Tell, have ye sailed to harbor or to wreck? 
Ye eyes, that shone with expectation grand. 
Say, have ye found the undecaying land? 

Can ye not send a white-wing'd carrier-dove. 
Some gentle courier from, the land of love, 
To tell that ye have trod that holy shore, 
Where love's sweet children will lament no more? 

No wind from any heaven will bring again 
My ship that vanished o'er the glimmering main; 
No sun that glorifies a vernal dawn 
May gild her wake, a path of splendor drawn. 

162 



and Other Poems 



Ten thousand sail may come from hundred lands, 
With glad hurrahs, and beckoning of brave hands ; 
But there's a silence in the midst of sound, 
A light in all their lights that is not found. 

Hath love no cry to sound beyond the foam ; 
No cry to bring the banish'd darlings home? 
No fiat, to make light transpierce the gloom, 
No voice imperial, to unsay the doom? 

Down the long passes of the Pyrenees, 
The blast of Roland, like the voice of seas, 
Told Roncesvalles' fight to Charlemain, 
A trumpet mourning o'er a field of slain. 

Tremendous clarion : fill'd with hero's breath, 
Couldst thou not shake the iron throne of death? 
A thousand vibrant hills took up thy strain. 
And all, no power to stir the mighty slain? 

The voice of Roland, far down many a hill 
Rebounding, after Roland's heart was still — 
The heart of man, yet quivering as of yore. 
When love has passed, and will come back no more. 

The pines still wailing, from the gust o'erblown, 
The harp yet vibrant, though the harper's gone ; ^ 
The soul, yet thrill'd with love's remember'd strain, 
When love is dead, and will not live again. 

Must not the tower, or campanile, rock. 
Though past is earth's pro founder shock? 
Will not the Titan tidal wave roll on, 
To dash its vengeance on an alien zone? 

163 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



TO THE MEMORY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
1909. 

As the song of the sea-shell, afar from the shore, 

May be heard in a mystical glen, 
So thy music, heard once, may be heard evermore : 
Now in age, I have turned to thy harping again, 

To be lulled by thy music, as then. 

Thy voice never was like the voice of the sea, 
Nor the hammer of thunder was thine; 

But thy music made think what an angel's might be ; 

Like the purest of zephyrs in branches of pine, 
When the echoing heart can divine. 

But the pollen was reft from a blossom so rare, 

(Let us mourn for the beautiful slain) 
And the worm at the heart of a fruitage so fair, 
How it darkens the glory with pitiful stain, 
Till the sweetness and beauty are vain. 

There was gloom on thy soul, but the genius how 
bright 

As it flashed in thy sorrowful eye ; 
As the stars that are argent on sable of night. 
Or after the sunset, are ermined on high, 

On a velvet and violet sky. 

Out of space, out of time, thou has swept us away 

In a music that wafted the soul, 
O'er the walls of the night, thro' the gates of the 

day 
Beyond where the heavens their luminous scroll. 

The emblazon of ages, unroll. 

164 



DEATH AND FAITH 



TO A NEW SINGER IN HEAVEN'S CHOIR. 

Away to that high land where angels are, 
In myriad armies, marshal'd at the throne, 
Thy soul hath sped the unseen highway lone, 

Attracted hence by glory weightier far; 

Too weak the ravel'd cords of earth and time 

To hold life's palpitating, eager car; 

Let go, toward God it gravitates sublime, 

Unhinder'd, more than is the morning star 

From rising, by the mountain's sable bar. 

Wife, daughter, sister, mother, — dead ; how still, O 
How still thy face, on that September day, 
When, with all reverence and love, they lay 

Thy gracious head upon its painless pillow. 

Safe hide, dear head, Amen: ordain'd no more 

To bow beneath the rude and bursting billow 
Of that dark sea that sweeps our crumbling 
shore ; 

Rest till He call thee from beneath the willow, 

Thy Bridegroom fair, the Man that is God's Fellow. 

The trumpet-words of God, the clarion-psalm, 
By this we answered the hoarse call of Death; 
This was the challenge of unconquer'd faith ; 
O'er thy dear dust we brooked no coward qualm. 

As if we yielded thee to death forever. 
Shake, hearts, but break not; wrestling souls, be 
calm ; 
Across that sea the Lamb's own light shall quiver. 
Across that grave God breathes memorial balm. 
And o'er death's cypress towers the resurrection- 
palm. 

167 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



O, voice on earth, melodious, rich and strong, 
To sing the glories of the sinner's Friend: 
O singer, when the myriad chords shall blend, 

Of saints' and angels' panegyric throng — 

That voice again to hear, more strong, more 
sweet, 

In fountains new of clear and gushing song: 
Springing to Him, in whom all glories meet. 

To whom all harmonies and hymns belong — 

A music new to thee — Abel hath known it long. 

Thine anguish, such as might make heroes blench. 

Yet could not break a heart so stay'd on heaven ; 

Thine eyes, like stars that shine through vapors 
driven, 
Pain dimmed their light, their love it could not 
quench ; 

Seldom thy voice, but oft the quivering feature. 
Betrayed to guardian eyes the vital wrench. 

We saw the wrestling of expiring nature, 
While wrinkled pain still plowed a deeper trench. 
And death secured his unrelaxing clench. 

Greet her, ye spirits of the perfect just; 

One more heart added to the charms of heaven. 

Deep-wash'd, perfumed of God, and full-for- 
given. 
There not untimely nor unfitly thrust, 

But meet for heritage of saints in light, 
She hath but gone where God's love said she must. 

Her soul, a traveling Shekinah bright, 
Leaving its low pavilion in the dust, 
Shall tabernacle there, where is nor moth nor rust. 

The fallen gem, new-set beside its peers ; 
The Pleiad lost, returning to her rest; 
The stray child, home-led to a mother's breast; 
i68 



and Other Poems 



The warrior-host, from death reclaim'd with cheers ; 

The son forlorn, rewarm'd at father's hearth; 
Lo, these have music in terrestrial years : 

Thou too, dear heart, — a soul redeemed from 
earth, 
And from the dimness past of time and tears, 
Art hailed by all the blest, — while Jesus smiles and 
hears. 



THE FLIGHT OF THE GOLDEN WINGS. 

The lamentations of the gray-head sea, 

With groaning and monotonous voice of yore, 
Wailing the troublous changes of the shore: 

As if from ultimate far lands to me 

His myriad waters sweep — I hear them roll, 

Like tones of unregarded prophecy; 
That outer deep that calleth, O my soul, 

Thou inner deep, interpret: Whither flee 

The vanish'd wings that folded once o'er thee? 

Ye bright wings, whither fled ? Say, are ye tost 
From wave to insurmountable dark wave, 
Waste howling wilderness of seas that lave 

What shores we know not ; — or on what dire coast. 
Black, boundless, horrible, say, are ye dashed 

And dimmed, your brightness and your beauty lost 
Where sun-glow on the chaos never flashed; 

A ray of gold by rayless darkness crost, 

A gem, upon death's sable shield embost? 

The ocean-anvil, smit by the hammering blast, 
White-hissing, hot, is spread to sheeted foam : 
Poor banish'd land-bird, and is this thy home ? 
169 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



These desert waters, dread, and vex'd, and vast — 
Beats thy weak wing above so wild abyss. 

From earthly love, and home, and shore outcast? 
Frail, arkless dove, is there no end but this ? 

No storm-fast isle, no crag, no lonely mast, 

To stay the winged soul, on death's wide sea aghast ? 

It needs not; for on wings more swift than light. 

Right through that storm — right through its 
wrack and roar. 

Our bird hath gained the unseen, stormless shore ; 
There preens her wings, beyond the zone of night, 

There shines and sings, a bird of Paradise. 
No land this side of heaven could stay her flight, 

No night, no storm could hide God from her 
eyes; 
Translated, beautiful amid the bright, 
A glory and a song among the saints in light. 



THE OLDEST MYSTERY. 

Riddle of earth and man, what are thou. Death? 
The grim memorial of ancestral crime ; 
Life's disappointment in her tryst with Time; 
The painful farewell between dust and breath; 

Most dread negation — Love's supreme farewell, 
Which thrice (in pain and maze and shame she 
saith) 
Evokes no answer from the abandon'd shell; 
The soul, a sword lost from a mold'ring sheath ; 
rrhe soul, a perish'd bloom; the clay, a withering 
wreath. 

170 



and Other Poems 



O silent shell upon a voiceful strand, 

Throbbing no more Avith murmurs of the wave, 

Vainly we peer within thy tinted cave, 
Seeking a tenant fled : Some holier land 

Hath made eterne the music lost in time ; 
Where crystal sea is edged with golden sand; 

Where is no sound untuned to love's sweet 
rhyme, 
Song of the Lamb is there, than earth's more grand ; 
Fairer pavilion too, for mightier music plann'd. 

Tremendous silence of the dust inurn'd : 

The orphan's ear is pressed upon the grass, 
The trampling generations come and pass, 

Nor is one echo from the tomb returned ; 
Darkness of death is voiceless as that light 

Auroral, 'mid the northern stars that burned, 
The cold fire kindled in the Arctic night. 

Whose ghostly glamour hath the Bear interned. 

O Love, though dead, art thou so unconcerned? 

Sarpedon pierced, to Lycian mountains borne, 
Alcestis, one foot on the sable prore. 
One hand outstretch'd to the unlighted shore, 

Demeter, of her vanish'd child forlorn; 

Or those who in far quest, have sailed beyond 

The goal of even or the gates of morn, 
In search of golden fleece or golden frond, 

Or fount of youth ; hands weak, but hearts unworn, 

Yonside the fiery cape, or Capricorn. 

Dear fables all : for no Icarian wing 

Above the gulf can hold or king or clown ; 
From life's empyrean fluttering wingless down — 

No, not the Orphean voice, the Delian string, 
The daedal skill, can draw to earth again. 

171 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



The rising eagle, by the serpent's sting 

Pierced sinks, but not more surely, to the plain; 
See writhing death to the vast pinions cling; 
So withers love in coils of that dread Thing. 

No — thou art sweet evangel, buried love ; 

And the far echo of thy silenced song, 

Which vibrates in the mourner's heart so long, 
Gives him to know what science ne'er shall prove. 

From th' overwhelming and abysmal sea, 
'Tis not the owl or raven, but the dove 

Brings green-leav'd hope of immortality, 
And that Immutability above. 
To which the mutable may sweetly move. 

Down each proud avenue to the narrow home. 
Old Karnak's cipher'd and tremendous gate, 
Or where the Carian monarch lay in state; 

Where Hadrian's pile confronts eternal Rome, 
Or Goth's black tomb beneath Busento's stream, 

Or Raphael's urn beneath the Pantheon-dome ; 
Where stained lights on marble coffins gleam; 

In cave, or crypt, or cool congenial loam, 

His word will pierce, and all the dead shall come. 



IN DROMORE CHURCHYARD. 

Lone barrows, roll'd in billowing grass. 
Green Ireland's green, an emerald mass. 

Proclaim: "Our dead are here." 
As they were dear, and strong, and brave, 
So let their sweet remembrance crave 
A mist of tears around their grave, 

For love must not grow sere. 
172 



and Other Poems 



The mysteries of time and space 
Oppress this mortuary place, 

This shadowy, silent spot. 
For, here we reach the mortal shore, 
And fain would pass the barrier o'er, 
We gaze, and dream, and can no more; 

They were — and are they not? 

The lips that utter no more word. 

The heavens that speak, and are not heard. 

Silence above, beneath; 
And stranger from far land am I, 
Who stand between that dreaming sky, 
Between the clouds that loiter by, 

And these thy chambers, Death. 

A silence in the heavens o'erhead, 
A silence of the weary dead, 

A silence in the soul ; 
For, living lips, they dare not speak, 
The lips of dust, they will not wake, 
And God will not the silence break, 

Until the trumpet roll. 

As unknown constellations rise 
For him who sails to southern skies. 

What day he nears the line ; 
The old familiar heavens are strange. 
But vast and beautiful the change, 
Where new stars in new heavens range. 

And with new lustre shine. 

So, death transfigures all the scene. 
The headstones, sunk in changeless green. 
The little church of stone ; 

173 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Transfigures e'en the sky above, 
While memory, the murmuring dove, 
Goes forth in search of perish'd love. 
That's now immortal grown. 

Like sombre wraiths of restless dead 
The clouds upon Sliebh Gallion's head 

In silence come or go; 
Silent, they rise on ocean-plain, 
In silence traverse land or main. 
Then leave the mountain lone again. 

As in the long ago. 

Knowest thou the balancings of clouds, 
Accumulate in shining crowds, 

Behind the fleeing storm? 
And when that welcome storm hath marched 
Above the fields and furrows parched, 
Then, seven-fold bow, in splendor arched. 

Doth gloom to glow transform. 

The goings-out of morn and even. 

The bright'ning and the dark'ning heaven, 

Have beauty transitory; 
But when He comes, sublime in cloud, 
His dead, from sepulchre and shroud. 
Greet Him with hallelujahs loud, 

And with him march to glory. 



AFTER MANY DAYS. 

Under grey skies thou goest forth with weeping, 
fe^Thou shalt not see the Autumn's golden haze 
Thy sowing shall become another's reaping, 
"Yes, after many days. 

174 



and Other Poems 



Go, cast thy bread upon the fleeting waters, 
And listen not for mortal lips to praise ; 

Ask not whose sons shall eat it, nor whose daugh- 
ters. 
Ask not — for many days. 

Nor sit beside the river broken-hearted. 

But o'er God's ocean stretch thy fearless gaze ; 

It shall not come in tears, as it departed, 
After the many days. 

Distrust not ; haste not ; faint not ; wait the sequel ; 

We see but atoms of His mighty ways ; 
The sower and the reaper shall be equal, 

At the far end of days. 

Thine alabaster-box of precious ointment, 
If broken for a suffering Savior's praise, 

Fear not, will prove no final disappointment, 
Though there be many days. 

''How long, O Lord," they cry beneath the altar, 
"Thy vengeance for our suffering still delays?" 

But with the white robe God says : "Wait, nor f alt- 
ter. 
Though it seem many days." 

Slow ages o'er the martyrs' dust are creeping, 
But their high witness never more decays; 

Now, harvest-home resounds above their sleeping, 
After these many days. 

Like him in Dothan, lo, thine eyes are holden, 
Thou dost not see God's angel-chariots blaze; 

But far, where Jesus is, the skies are golden 
Beyond the end of days. 

175 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



God's autumn comes; say not meanwhile, thou 
starvest ; 

Behold, like cedar'd Lebanon it sways; 
God, thine own God, hath set for thee a harvest, 

Ripe — at the end of days. 



TO K. M. M. 

I saw thee pass beneath the bower, 

Arrayed in bridal bloom ; 
Who could have known how swift the hour 

That robed thee like the tomb ? 

Twas but a sunset glory there. 

An evanescent glow, 
That faded on the western air, 

And left thee dark below. 

The torch of life, so soon reversed 

Hath shed its farewell ray; 
The noble form, so early hears'd, 

Hath gone the shadow' d way. 

Yet never death shall vanquish love, 

Tho' life between them fled ; 
The heart still lights her lamp, above 

The ashes of the dead. 

Eternity is near to Time, 

And Time speeds in its groove, 

A moment from the earthly chime 
To that high song above. 
176 



and Other Poems 



'Twas bloom and beauty of the bride, 

*Tis now the widow's tears ; 
'Twas manhood, glowing at thy side, 
And now — the silent years. 

He stood beside thee, glad to bow 
And plight the holy word ; 

A little while with thee — but now, 
For ever with the Lord. 



177 



SATIRE 



WANTED^A PASTOR 

[for a fashionable church]. 

If the reader detect some echoes of other men in this 
satire, let him bear with it. My wish was rather to 
point a moral than to adorn a tale; so, like Samson, I 
chose the weapon that came handiest, not thinking at 
all of the previous owner thereof. 

**A hero/' said Lord Byron, "that's my want." 

But heroes are not that for which we pant. 

We seek a man, sing it aloud, O muse, 

To fill the pulpit and to fill the pews. 

Tourists, convoy 'd by Cook, may journey round 

The globe, to Palestine from Puget Sound ; 

From Bab-el-Mandeb's Melancholy Gate, 

To where the rorqual blows in Behring's Strait ; 

From palms of Florida and tepid foam. 

Far to the golden Chersonese of Nome ; 

And where the Klondike, with auriferous dirt, 

Invites the booted miner in red shirt; 

Or those columnar posts of Herakles 

Divide the ancient from the modern seas; 

View ups and downs of life, from Bushman's 

kraal. 
To mirror'd splendors of the Taj Mahal. 
And, when you face our custom-house again, 
We'll search your clothes and seven trunks in vain. 
Fine things and wondrous sights you may have 

found. 
But not a man, to till this holy ground. 

Diogenes, thou lord of bitter jest. 
Forsake thy rent-free tub, and aid our quest. 
Change thy poor lanthorn for electric light, 
i8i 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



And search the nations for an honest wight. 
'Tis safe to say, in prose or numerous verse, 
The thing we're looking for is unco' scarce. 
Tell us, grim Cynic, has thou found the man 
Who will fill out our well-considered plan? 
The man we want, that is to say, for he 
Must be a paragon from A to Z. 
For look, we make thee sure, Athenian freeman, 
*Jis not a man that we would have, but the man. 

Alas, to mention all the faults — egregious — 
Which he must not have, it would be too tedious ; 
"Tempus deficeref* — it looks best in Latin, 
As meagre necks are well set off by satin. 

He must be sensible, not sensitive ; 
Must take a thousand pin-pricks, never give. 
His stomach must be tough as a hen's gizzard. 
Digesting all affronts, from A to Izzard. 
In some things, like th' ornithorhynchus, 
(Don't call our boat by such a name; 'twould sink 

us) 
Be like the ducks and the amphibians too ; 
He must not lie, not yet tell all that's true. 

He must not be an obstinate man, for then 
He'd be unfit to deal with obstinate men ; 
Men who, with blind, unreasoning impact, 
Will dash against a clear and shining fact. 
As, on dark, stormy nights, it comes to pass, 
Birds dash themselves against the lighthouse glass, 
He must not shun a laugh with common folks, 
Yet ne'er descending to unseemly jokes ; 
A tale to swap, like Lincoln, long of joint. 
But ne'er like Lincoln's, with too sharp a point. 
If to the ladies 'twas not fit to tell. 
Grant thought it was unfit for men as well. 

He must be elegant, but not too fine ; 
182 



and Other Poems 



He must not ''gti his dinner," but must "dine." 
He must not be old-fashioned ; this we press ; 
Old-fashioned or in doctrine, or in dress ; 
Tho' he may labor, worthy of his hire, 
Yet he'll not do, unless he suits the choir. 
'Tis not the "choir invisible" by far, 
But much in evidence; who think they are, 
When fussing with their quavering flats and sharps, 
Sweet as the harpers, harping with their harps. 

And we must eke consider, by the way, 
Those who are swift to giggle, slow to pray. 
To please these ruling classes, he must be 
A man both sweet to hear, and fair to see. 

There is, 'tween sight and sound a brain-deep 

nexus. 
As Maine, the* seeming far, is near to Texas. 

I am as quick to quote from Cicero, 

As mothers are at night, to kiss a row 

Of tously heads beneath the counterpane: 

"All arts, which to humanity pertain. 

Are bound together by a common tie. 

And, as it were, joined by affinity." 

So then, the rainbow in the firmament 

May be with chords of Bach or Mozart blent. 

The Parthenon — or Milan's marble wonder, 

May find its echo in the tropic thunder; 

And if you can't see Raphael's Madonnas, 

It's much the same to hear the prima donnas. 

The tap'stry of Kashgar or Samarcand 

Will match the music of piano grand; 

And Sinim's carved ivory, deft and sharp, 

May stir your musings like ^olian harp. 

There is a story of a poor blind varlet. 

Was asked: "What think you of the color scarlet?" 

183 



The Battle of Gettysburg; 



He said : *' 'Tis like the blast upon a trumpet." 

If you like not this rhyme, why, you must — 

(Here's a lacuna in the manuscript, 

Where the pup chewed, or, hap, dull scissors dipt) 

The blind man's answer shows that sight and sound 

Have somewhere, in the brain, a common ground, 

So, when we seek an epithet quite handy. 

To pin a label on a too-bold dandy. 

To differentiate him from well-dress'd crowd. 

We need but say : *'His clothes are very loud." 

To make my meaning plain, by fit example. 
Now, there's Miss Waugh Ter Million — she's a 

sample. 
Her garments sound like sunsets ; or, at least, her 
Dress and her head-dress shine aloud at Easter ; 
And when I see her, walking up the aisle. 
If I were not right reverent — I should smile. 
Yes, eyes, as many as on peacock's tail. 
Watch for her up the middle aisle to sail, 
With splendid steerage of the silken trail. 
Perhaps, stern reader, with your logic stark. 
You'll rise to point of order, and remark: 
"Dear sir, I know things are not what they seem, 
But what's all this to do with your high theme? 
You surely could get on a little faster, 
And tell the marks by which you choose a pastor." 
Well, churches are as changeful as the seasons. 
And sometimes choose their pastors for poor 

reasons. 
The timely neighing of Hytaspes' horse 
Was once permitted a king-maker's force. 
And served to guide the Persian Empire's course. 

If we, like Adam, went in undressed pelts, 
Cloth'd in our innocence, and little else. 
Why, then, a church's call would sure express 

184 



and Other Poems 



Some better reason than the pastor's dress. 

A man whom they could view with gratitude, 

To see how graceful was his attitude. 

Even when he uttered a mere platitude: 

And when he finished, down he sat, a dude. 

So, every pretty and conceited minx 

Speaks, far more freely even than she thinks ; 

Sure of a welcome, in her blues and pinks, 

Sure of her wisdom as the Theban sphinx ; 

She's thought to voice the preference of the young 

And that's what counts, or be it said or sung — 

There are, who fain would have their pastor trace 

'His lineage to some illustrious race; 

Or that he come, at least, from some great place, 

(Tho' biggest men from smallest towns may come, 

As from Arpinum Tully came to Rome). 

Or else, with nose in air, the scorner saith : 

"Can any good thing come from Nazareth ?" 

For in church-goers, there are found some snobs, 

Who may not have gold watches, but have fobs. 

•You're told that each hidalgo Andalusian 

Thinks he's a scion of Boabdil — vain delusion ! 

It's notable how the most azure blood 

Hath such a fixed affinity for — mud. 

And you don't need to be porphyrogene. 

To preach the gospel of the Nazarene. 

[Better the plainest man, in youth or age, 

Than one who'd lord it o'er God's heritage. 

To fill the scripture-office of a pastor, 

A guide and friend you need, but not a master. 

As, if we had to lead the life of frog, 

We would prefer the reign of dull King Log, 

To that long-tax-bill King, of drastic work — 

That Edward Longshanks, King severe — the stork. 

i8s 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Whate'er ye do, be sure ye do not ask 
Bombastes Furioso to the task ; 
Whose voice reverberates hke basso-drummer, 
He's like the storms you sometimes see in summer, 
Where Hghtning hardly seems to match the thun- 
der, 
And sound and sense are each a cause of wonder, 
In ways diverse. Now might you hear retold, 
To illuminate our theme, a fable old : 
The ass, who valor's medal sought to win, 
Arrayed his baseness in the lion's skin. 
The hide, indeed, shook horror all around, 
•But when he roared — 'twas laughter met the sound. 
Have we not seen the parson, in fine robes, 
Quite awesome; but who smote our aural lobes. 
With pompous style and sounds cacophonous. 
Which did not make his thoughts diaphanous; 
And some coarse men were even heard to say, 
That he who came to preach remained to bray. 
Mistaken man! who thinks that he can call 
This earthly ball with his unearthly bawl. 
The farmer thought it but a sorry joke. 
When urged to purchase of a pig in poke ; 
You must not judge Achilles by his heel. 
Nor dog by bark, nor even pig by squeal ; 
And they must be uncommon fond of noise, 
Who choose a pastor chiefly for his voice. 

Beware the man who thinks that he is wise 

To simplify the ancient mysteries. 

When mightiest minds of earth have failed to solve, 

He thinks th' unriddling must on him devolve. 

(A bat, half-blind, and flitting here and there 

Among the granite doctrines, without care) 

His wisdom is so fresh that it is raw, 

i86 



and Other Poems 



And what these mighty minds have held in awe. 
He thinks to settle with few wags of jaw. 
The doctrines that have stood the test of Time, 
This man, with little reason, and less rhyme, 
Would lightly hurl into Oblivion's grime. 
Judged by himself, a giant-killer he; 
But listen somewhat carefully, you'll see, 
That while he seems an awful sword to draw, 
The giants that he slays are men of straw. 
His boastings move the sinful world to jeer, 
The wise to anger, and the meek to fear. 

The Greek proclaimed, to quell the camp's alarms, 
*'Who hath let loose the ass among the arms ?" 
And laughter well may cause your ribs to crack, as 
You hunt the lion and you catch the jackass. 

If there's a place from which, in all the world, 
The salary-seeker should be promptly hurled 
(Since dirt is ''only matter in wrong place)" 
The money-lover should fill other space — 
When he takes on himself to speak instead 
Of Him, who had not where to lay his head. 
A man of Tarsus claimed, and it was true: 
''Corinthians, I seek not yours, but you." 
But these will surely get what most they seek. 
Collecting it from Scythian, Jew, or Greek. 
One text they can expound, with force and fire, 
"The laborer is worthy of his hire." 
But listen sharply, and you'll notice, neighbor. 
The stress is on the hire, not on the labor. 
He would be one of those, who each bore half 
The cluster'd wealth of Esh-col on a staff. 
When salary's paid, he is in Christian mood, 
And thinks: "The gold of that there land is good." 
His business method? That of New York shyster. 
Whose client gets the shell, and he the oyster. 

187 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Hast found the man? He's worth his weight in 

gold; 
Go, shout "Eureka," like the sage of old. 
I bid thee not, like him, rush from the bath, 
Arrayed but in the robe that nature hath. 
Thou'st found what earth could yield not, nor the 

sea. 
How happier in thy quest and trove than she. 
Who ne'er on pillow laid a weary head, 
Till she had sought the burglar 'neath the bed. 
Her search rewarded, after many years, 
Behind the valence the dread boot appears, 
*'Ex pede Herculem" ; she knew that all 
The rest was there, and uttered the sharp call. 
The semi-somnous husband answered queer. 
**Well, well; I'm glad at last you've found him, 

dear; 
You've looked for him, 'tis now the twentieth year." 
Now, as she judged the burglar by the boot, 
Don't choose your pastor for a dapper foot. 

It would be well in planning all these things 
(Trying to splice together all the strings) 
To spend some thought upon the lowly herd 
Who want a minister to "preach the Word." 
Your high falutin man they may admire, 
But pyrotechnics are not sacred fire. 
Talk, thin and watery, tho' very bright, 
A fountain tinted with electric light, 
And cold as is the Northern Dawn at night. 
Hungry in soul, they leave the temple door. 
From a poor sermon to a dinner poor. 
You joke at them, because they're orthodox, 
They ruminate, as patient as the ox. 
Tho' they complain not much, they're dumbly con- 
scious 



and Other Poems 



This meagre soup won't fill their moral paunches. 
(That rhyme offends the purist; I admit it; 
These dissyllabic rhymes can't always hit it.) 

Nor is the matter better, if the preacher 
Cannot fulfil the office of a teacher. 
He cannot make his meaning plain and sure, 
And, laboring to be deep, becomes obscure. 
Just understand : No long time will men stand 
Under the talk that they don't understand. 



The feet most beautiful that earth have trod 

Are his who stands upon our mouldering sod, 

To tell to men the saving truth of God. 

Who, learning the deep things of God, can tell 

The things of heaven and the things of hell; 

Can show the guilty soul how it may stand 

Righteous as God himself, at God's right hand. 

From ages and from generations old 

This truth was veiled, but now is plainly told; 

And, by the mandate of eternal God, 

To all the dying nations sent abroad. 

He who is called of God to this high task 

Will need no robe, no cothurn and no mask. 

With words as serious as the bell that tolls. 

With prayer that cries, and heart that yearns for 

souls, 
To turn them to that Living Lord that bled, 
He stands between the living and the dead. 
So, with the word of Truth upon his lips, 
Aims at the souls of men, and boldly grips 
Their sluggish consciences to make them feel 
It is with God Almighty they must deal. 
A man whose guerdon is, the boon unpriced 
To win the hearts of men for Jesus Christ. 

189 



The Battle of Gettysburg 



Who, while the myriads comfortably sleep 
Awakes to watch for souls, to pray or weep. 
Blest church ! were such a man to fill thy chair, 
Tho' he were cloth'd in sackcloth and in hair. 



[The End.] 



IQO 



BROADWAY PUBLISHING CO'S 
NEWEST BOOKS 

All Bound in Silk Cloth and Gilt. Many Illustrated 
Fiction 

The Eyes at the Window (beautifully bound, with 

embossed jacket) — Olivia Smith Cornelius $l .50 

Next-Night Stories — C. J. Messer i .25 

Arthur St. Clair of Old Fort Recovery— S. A. D. 

Whipple 1 . 50 

Barnegat Yarns — F. A. Lucas i , 00 

Jean Carroll, with six illustrations — John H. Case i . 50 

As a Soldier Would — Abner Pickering i . 50 

The Nut-Cracker, and Other Human Ape Fables — 

C. E. Blanchard, M.D , 1 .00 

Moon-Madness, and Other Fantasies — ^Aimee 

Crocker Gouraud (5th ed.) i .00 

Sadie, or Happy at Last — May Shepherd i . 50 

Tweed, a Story of the Old South — S. M. Swales . . i . 50 
The White Rose of the Miami— Mrs. E. W. 

Ammerman i . 50 

The Centaurians — Biagi i . 50 

The Reconstruction of Elinore Wood — Florenz S. 

Merrow i . 50 

A Nest of Vipers — Morgan D. Jones i .50 

Religious IVorks 

The Disintegrating Church — Frederick William 

Atkinson i . 00 

Evolution of Belief — J. W. Gordon i . 50 

Down Hill and Up Hill — Rev. J. G. Anderson . . 2 , 00 

A Certain Samaritan — Rev. John Richelsen i . 00 

The Reunion of Christendom — Francis Goodman i . 50 
What the Church Is and What It Should Be— 

Lafayette Swindle i . 50 

A Harp of the Heart. (Poems) — Rev. Chas. 

Coke Woods i . 00 

The Gospel Parables in Verse — Rev. Christopher 

Smith 75 

Who? Whence? Where? An Essay by Pedro 

Batista i . 00 

Compendium of Scriptural Truths — MarshaU 

Smith 1.25 

The Passion Play at Ober Ammergau — Esse Esto 

Maplestone i . 00 

Israel Lo Ammi — Ida M. Nungasser i .00 



The Eternal Evangel — Solomon S. Hilscher $i .50 

A New Philosophy of Life — J. C. Coggins i .00 

Romance of the Universe — B. T. Stauber i ,50 

In the Early Days — Adelaide Hickox i . 50 

The New Theology — By a Methodist Layman — 
Hamilton White i .00 

Miscellaneous 

Anvil Sparks — Radical Rhymes and Caustic 

Comments, by Wilby Heard 75 

The Medical Expert and Other Papers — Louis J. 

Rosenberg 50 

The Little Sufferers (dealing with the Abuses of 

the Children's Societies) — G. Martin i . 50 

Eureka, a Prose Poem — S. H. Newberry i .00 

Rust (a play in four acts) — Algernon Tassin (of 

Columbia University) i . 00 

Poems by Charles Guinness i . 00 

Prohibition and Anti-Prohibition — Rommel, 

Ziegler & Herz i . 00 

Gay Gods and Merry Mortals — ^Verse by Robert J. 

Shores i . 00 

The Rubaiyat of the College Student — Ned Naf e . 50 
The Deluge of England, and Other Poems — James 

Francis Thierry i .00 

The Dragon's Teeth — a Philosophical and Eco- 
nomic Work — T. M. Sample i .00 

Achsah, the Sister of Jairus — Mabel Cronise 

Jones 1 . 00 

The Marriage Bargain Counter — Daisy Deane . . i . 50 
Building a New Empire — Nathaniel M. Ayers. . i .50 

Marriage and Divorce — Jeanette Laurance i .00 

The Clothespin Brigade — Clara L. Smiley 75 

"Forget It" — Ida Von Claussen. i .50 

The Last Word: a Philosophical Essay — James 

and Mary Baldwin i .00 

Travel 

Eight Lands in Eight Weeks (illustrated by 90 
drawings) — Marcia P. Snyder i .25 

Eliza and Etheldreda in Mexico — Patty Guthrie 
(illustrated) i . 25 

The attention of clergrymen is directed to our Religrious List, one 
of the largest of any house in America. 

Write for free copy of our magazine, BOOK CHAT. 

BROADWAY PUBLISHING CO., 835 BROADWAY, N. Y. 

Brnnch Offices: 

ATLANTA BALTIMORE INDIANAPOLIS NORFOLK 

WASHINGTON DES MOINES, IOWA 



MAY 29 1512 



